The Money Mustache Community
General Discussion => Throw Down the Gauntlet => Topic started by: HappierAtHome on September 05, 2017, 07:32:39 PM
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It's well and truly time for me to get my act together and spend a little energy and money on some basic measures in case of local, short term emergencies.*
Who else needs to get moving on having a small supply of drinking water, food, first aid supplies, etc on hand?
*So, not the zombie apocalypse, though that is also a fun thing to talk about.
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One of my first actions will be to acquire some water storage containers (e.g. these (https://www.anacondastores.com/camping-hiking/hydration/water-purification-storage/kookaburra-water-container/p/BP90002086001)) and create a stash of clean drinking water.
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I've been re-upping my kit as well. The wild fires near me have me spooked. Badassity, to me, includes being able to keep yourself safe in an emergency and not be a burden. So a basic kit is a must in my eyes =)
(Cost savings- new gauze and bleed stopper I wanted for med kits I'm putting on my next subscribe and save. 15% off then 5% cash back. Holla).
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PTF
Very timely post! I was talking to DH about this just before bed :)
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PTF.
After moving from an area prone to wildfires we've (stupidly) allowed ourselves to fall out of preparedness.
We need to better organize things for a rapid emergency evacuation as well as back-up and protect things from an acute catastrophy (e.g. building fire).
For hte former we need to brush up on what we need to take in an emergency and keep things in a centralized location. For the latter we ought to have a fireproof safe for our passports & other documents, some more cash on hand and off-site digitial backups of our 'digital lives".
I feel pretty confident we are reasonably prepared to 'shelter in place' given our food storage and backpacking hobbies (we've no shortage of pantry items, portable/gas stoves, light sources (headlamps, lanterns, candles plus batteries), water filtration & storage etc.)
what am I missing?
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Northwest edible just started a series on preparedness that I found interesting: http://www.nwedible.com/preparedness-101-1-what-is-preparedness/
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Northwest edible just started a series on preparedness that I found interesting: http://www.nwedible.com/preparedness-101-1-what-is-preparedness/
Thanks for sharing. I loved this bit of humor from Erika:
Holy leaping overreaction, people. You know in a real emergency, we’re gonna eat the needlessly hysterical ones first, right? Do try to keep it together.
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Basic Emergency Preparedness should be done by everybody. We are highly dependent on the systems around is; making sure you can at least get by a few days, when it fails makes just plain sense.
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I've been re-upping my kit as well. The wild fires near me have me spooked. Badassity, to me, includes being able to keep yourself safe in an emergency and not be a burden. So a basic kit is a must in my eyes =)
(Cost savings- new gauze and bleed stopper I wanted for med kits I'm putting on my next subscribe and save. 15% off then 5% cash back. Holla).
Coincidentally, I was reading this this morning: http://thesweethome.com/reviews/emergency-preparedness/
I have been filling 1.25L mineral water bottles and will just keep a dozen in the garage.
We had fires here last year and I got spooked -- my emergency plan was to get myself and the dog down to the beach, but that didn't seem so brilliant when surrounded by bush with the flames only half a suburb away! New plan is to get out early.
Don;t really agree with the recommendations on the website:
- The best bottle for preparedness is a hydroflask?
- Ration bars taste like sawdust? More like short bread, not something you want to eat day after day, but not too bad.
- Grill... ok, that seems a bit big and inefficient. Would recommend if you already had it, would not recommend buying one for preparedness.
- Candles, would not recommend them due to fire hazard.
- Fire striker tool; only for people who know how to use them.
- Fire Extinguisher they recommend is powder, which is very effective, but also makes a huge mess and destroys pretty much all electronics near it (and laxative...)
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Today we started stocking up on food with a long shelf life that we'll definitely eat anyway. There'll need to be a bit of inventory management to ensure stock rotation, but it means we won't be wasting $$ on food that won't be eaten. If there is an emergency we'll get bored of eating baked beans, but I can live with that.
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I've lived in Houston for 3 years, and after the flood the year I moved here I started a small survival kit for me, my girlfriend, and our dog. Here are my tips based on what has/hasn't worked. Be aware I haven't had to actually use the supplies, but have had to move them around a bit and have seen what disappears from stores quickly.
First, don't get a giant 25L water jug you have to fill, even though it looks cool. Filling your own water bottle is a recipe for algae and stuff in it if you keep it long term, and it'll be a bitch to move if you have to evacuate (and you will want to take water if you evacuate). Every L of water weighs 1kg (2.2 lbs for us Americans). That doesn't seem like a whole lot if it's on a weightlifting bar, but in a jug of water it's certainly not convenient. I buy the 6 pack of 1 gallon (3.8L) bottles at Costco for something like $4. You can keep them in the 6 pack for quicker movement but heavier weight, or break them up if you need to. They're also shelf stable so you don't have to worry about algae or anything. I also have at least one large package of single serve bottles for convenience. 1 gallon per person per day is the rule of thumb, I have enough for about a week (a bit less if we give our roommates some) at that rate. Also, don't get the milk jug looking bottles, they break over time. I've had good luck with this style: https://goo.gl/images/wZvhwh
Granola bars and easy to eat things are good, but I also have some ramen and a DIY alcohol camping stove in case our home gas goes out and we want a hot meal. Freeze dried veggies are available at some supermarkets, and pair well with packaged ramen to add some substance. In reality, you probably won't need much food as whatever you already have in your fridge/pantry should hold you over for at least a week. If you want to be extra safe get a few MREs or camping meals, they last basically forever and some taste pretty good. We have enough random canned food and stuff in the deep freezer that I don't bother.
For first aid, Benadryl is a must to help with possible allergies. Some of each type of painkiller like aspirin, acetaminophen, and ibuprofen is good in case you or someone you may be stuck with needs a specific one. Triple antibiotic is also good. I also like having burn gel (usually has near prescription amounts of pain reliever in it). Anti diarrheal meds and some fiber are both helpful as well, the fiber especially if you're eating a bunch of beef jerky and MREs for your diet. Be aware of expiration dates on the medicines. Don't buy a huge first aid kit that you don't know how to use with sutures and all sorts of crazy stuff. Obviously if you or a loved one have any prescription requirements, try and keep about a month's supply on hand at any given time.
An external phone battery is a good investment as well, you don't want to be like some friends of mine and have to go start up your car and burn gas to charge a couple cell phones. A radio isn't a bad idea either (although I don't actually have one). Lots of batteries and a few good flashlights are a must, although a cell phone is a decent backup. I have a camping headlamp that uses AA batteries and have probably 10 at any given time. A generator is expensive, but may be worth it depending on where you are. I hear good things about Hondas.
Another tip is keep your gas topped up in your car. If you're lazy about it like me, just go get gas any time there's a remote possibility of a disaster coming. Hurricane that is heading in your general direction? Time to fill up. Don't rely on gas stations or grocery stores being useful before/during/after the disaster.
If you're doomsday prepping for a multi month ordeal, obviously this advice doesn't apply all that much. For most "regular" disasters you'll be just fine with some extra water and a bit of food. If you live out in the middle of nowhere, prepare for a longer stay. Also knowing common evacuation routes/areas is a pretty big deal. Don't be afraid to leave early.
edit: Just started reading the sweethome article. Be aware that shelf life for bottled water is for taste/odor, not safety. It will keep indefinitely. I'd trust commercially bottled water far more than an opaque jug I filled myself. Buying it at a big box store is very cost efficient. Their 7 gallon container costs $15 on Amazon, I bought 6 gallons at Costco for <$5 (I think it was around $3 actually). Their 55 gallon drum costs over $2/gallon, again very expensive and a pain IMO, although you may get more prepper cred for it.
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PTF.
After moving from an area prone to wildfires we've (stupidly) allowed ourselves to fall out of preparedness.
We need to better organize things for a rapid emergency evacuation as well as back-up and protect things from an acute catastrophy (e.g. building fire).
For hte former we need to brush up on what we need to take in an emergency and keep things in a centralized location. For the latter we ought to have a fireproof safe for our passports & other documents, some more cash on hand and off-site digitial backups of our 'digital lives".
I feel pretty confident we are reasonably prepared to 'shelter in place' given our food storage and backpacking hobbies (we've no shortage of pantry items, portable/gas stoves, light sources (headlamps, lanterns, candles plus batteries), water filtration & storage etc.)
what am I missing?
Have you prepared your home and yard to be resistant to an encroaching fire?
Clear at least 30ft between a structure and trees, woods, dry grass, etc. Remove flammable materials from around the outside of the house (piles of wood, plastic lawn furniture, picnic tables, etc.). Have either a nice green, irrigated lawn around your house or something not flammable, like a stone patio or rock garden. I would also have lawn sprinklers on hand to set up around your house, and on your roof if you have a flammable roofing material, especially if you plan to "shelter in place". If maintaining water in a power outage requires a generator, I would have one of those too.
Its fairly easy stuff, but a lot of people don't think about it until they can smell smoke.
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One of my first actions will be to acquire some water storage containers (e.g. these (https://www.anacondastores.com/camping-hiking/hydration/water-purification-storage/kookaburra-water-container/p/BP90002086001)) and create a stash of clean drinking water.
You already have a stash of clean drinking water if you've got toilets in your home. The back of each toilet contains potable drinking water that is kept fresh via operation of the toilet. Most people keep bottles to hold drinking water in their home already, and it just takes seconds to lift the top off the tank and fill.
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PTF.
After moving from an area prone to wildfires we've (stupidly) allowed ourselves to fall out of preparedness.
We need to better organize things for a rapid emergency evacuation as well as back-up and protect things from an acute catastrophy (e.g. building fire).
For hte former we need to brush up on what we need to take in an emergency and keep things in a centralized location. For the latter we ought to have a fireproof safe for our passports & other documents, some more cash on hand and off-site digitial backups of our 'digital lives".
I feel pretty confident we are reasonably prepared to 'shelter in place' given our food storage and backpacking hobbies (we've no shortage of pantry items, portable/gas stoves, light sources (headlamps, lanterns, candles plus batteries), water filtration & storage etc.)
what am I missing?
Have you prepared your home and yard to be resistant to an encroaching fire?
Clear at least 30ft between a structure and trees, woods, dry grass, etc. Remove flammable materials from around the outside of the house (piles of wood, plastic lawn furniture, picnic tables, etc.). Have either a nice green, irrigated lawn around your house or something not flammable, like a stone patio or rock garden. I would also have lawn sprinklers on hand to set up around your house, and on your roof if you have a flammable roofing material, especially if you plan to "shelter in place". If maintaining water in a power outage requires a generator, I would have one of those too.
Its fairly easy stuff, but a lot of people don't think about it until they can smell smoke.
Good advice for those in fire-country, but not applicable to us, as we have no yard and currently live in an urban environment. No well either, though I grew up with one (my parents, who still live there, have a generator).
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One of my first actions will be to acquire some water storage containers (e.g. these (https://www.anacondastores.com/camping-hiking/hydration/water-purification-storage/kookaburra-water-container/p/BP90002086001)) and create a stash of clean drinking water.
You already have a stash of clean drinking water if you've got toilets in your home. The back of each toilet contains potable drinking water that is kept fresh via operation of the toilet. Most people keep bottles to hold drinking water in their home already, and it just takes seconds to lift the top off the tank and fill.
That works if you plan not to use the toilet. I'd rather just spend $20 on enough bottled water for 4 people for a week.
Slightly related tip, fill up your bathtub if you have reason to think the water may be cut off. You could drink it if you had to, but it's better for washing hands and filling up the back of toilets (assuming the drainage system is still working).
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One of my first actions will be to acquire some water storage containers (e.g. these (https://www.anacondastores.com/camping-hiking/hydration/water-purification-storage/kookaburra-water-container/p/BP90002086001)) and create a stash of clean drinking water.
You already have a stash of clean drinking water if you've got toilets in your home. The back of each toilet contains potable drinking water that is kept fresh via operation of the toilet. Most people keep bottles to hold drinking water in their home already, and it just takes seconds to lift the top off the tank and fill.
That works if you plan not to use the toilet. I'd rather just spend $20 on enough bottled water for 4 people for a week.
Slightly related tip, fill up your bathtub if you have reason to think the water may be cut off. You could drink it if you had to, but it's better for washing hands and filling up the back of toilets (assuming the drainage system is still working).
Another, more substantial source of clean drinking water is your hot water heater. Shut the breaker off (even if the power out), open the valve and you can have 40-60 gallons of treated water to drink and refill bottles with.
If you haven't drained it in a while you might get a lot of silt, so i) drain it annually and ii) run it through a makeshift filter in a true emergency (cheese-cloth, sterilized sand in a 2l soda bottle, or just let it settle out etc).... or not. the silt won't hurt you.
The only times this won't work is if the water pipes themselves become contaminated (e.g. salt water intrusion into wells or the city water supply) and it gets into your water tank or if you have a 'tankless' water heater. To prevent this, shut off and turn off your water heater before a major storm as part of your emergency preparedness strategy.
*if you are on a well and/or have a water softener/hardener this is another large source of potable water in an emergency.
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Since this popped up in my email today, I thought maybe it might be useful for this thread.
50 Last Minute Ways to Prepare for an Emergency (http://foodstoragemadeeasy.net/2012/11/13/50-last-minute-ways-to-prepare-for-an-emergency/)
No connection to the website, by the way, I just came across it years ago when looking at solutions for storing large quantities of cans or something like that and ended up signing up for their babysteps to preparedness manual (and dutifully filed all the emails and did none of it!) and from there started receiving their occasional newsletters.
Oh, meant to say that one thing I thought specially worth mentioning from that list is taking photos of everything beforehand, to facilitate insurance claims afterwards.
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Thanks for this thread, Happier!
To add:
1. Sandbag to block your toilet's drain. When we were flooded, this was a primary recommendation that most of us didn't know about. You put the sandbag right in the toilet, to block its hole. This way, if the sewer backs up, shit doesn't get added to your house's flood water.
2. Walking pole/stick. In a flood, you don't know where the holes, uncovered storm grates, etc, are. Poke the step in front of you, then proceed.
3. Identify at least four homes you can move to. One right out of the larger area; go there if you can. Three within a short walk. When we flooded, we were in a small, short, single-storey unit. We identified four nearby homes with a second-storey and room and friendliness enough to receive us if needed.
4. Inflatable or static floatation devices. In Houston, I liked when I saw two kids with life jackets on! People floated pet carriers on kick boards, old people kept themselves safe in inflatable tubes.
5. Battery-operated inflator for #4. I got one for $20. Compact.
6. Back-up batteries. (I generally use rechargeable in normal life. I wouldn't count on being able to recharge during an emergency.)
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So, how much do you guys Costco? Without planning for a zompocalypse, our standard larder seems to always have a week or more to go in it when we re-supply at the biggest box store in boxstoreland.
Seriously, I super recommend the week or so of canned/long term food and some bottled water. It just seems like we area always there.
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2. Walking pole/stick. In a flood, you don't know where the holes, uncovered storm grates, etc, are. Poke the step in front of you, then proceed.
Interesting - never gave this much tohught but it makes a lot of sense.
I'll add - prepare for more than one type of emergency. People are focusing on flooding right now because of Harvey and Irma, but other dangers exist (e.g. fires, ice storms, blizzards, tornadoes, earth-quakes, civil unrest, ...) Some happen with little warning while others can give you hours to days to prepare. You might need to shelter-in-place under some circumstances or evacuate quickly in others. A disaster that doesn't impact your home directly might disrupt access and utility service for days or even weeks.
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So, how much do you guys Costco? Without planning for a zompocalypse, our standard larder seems to always have a week or more to go in it when we re-supply at the biggest box store in boxstoreland.
Seriously, I super recommend the week or so of canned/long term food and some bottled water. It just seems like we area always there.
We always have enough food on hand just from normal living, although more of it requires cooking than I'd like. In Houston flooding and occasionally tornados are the real danger, so I'm fine relying on a camp stove or grill if need be. We have enough no cooking needed food for probably 3-4 days at a given moment.
We never drink bottled water, but that is one thing I buy specifically for these sorts of situations. Everywhere was sold out 1-2 days before Harvey was scheduled to hit. I don't want to be like my roommate waiting at Sam's club for an hour to buy some overpriced Evian in individual 1L bottles. It's even more dangerous when people start freaking out and fighting over it.
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Also: minimalism and scanning :)
We had already minimized our possessions when our place flooded, so literally everything fit on one high shelf, in the high kitchen cupboards, and perched on our tiny table. That wouldn't have done much if the water came in enough to push the table and enter the cupboards, but it was fabulous for:
*water short of that point;
*having our most critical stuff ready for transport;
*having very little clean-up to do if the water did get bigger;
*not cleaning up stuff we didn't really want anyway;
*being able to quickly move our favourite stuff to those safe positions.
All but 20 of my documents are now scanned -cards and letters, tax stuff, rental agreement, health records, etc. I've kept many of the originals, because I like them (especially cards and letters), but if things got swept or burned away, I would still have the precious or helpful words. No need to go through more emotional angst or devastation than any crisis already brings!
Displacement, recovery work, clean-up, etc, can all take a huge toll for many, many, many months. I try to keep that period as light as possible.
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All but 20 of my documents are now scanned -cards and letters, tax stuff, rental agreement, health records, etc. I've kept many of the originals, because I like them (especially cards and letters), but if things got swept or burned away, I would still have the precious or helpful words. No need to go through more emotional angst or devastation than any crisis already brings!
A very good idea to have digital copies of important documents and memories (photos, videos). Just make sure that it's stored in more than one location. It won't do you much good to have things backed up on an external hard drive that sits next to your computer if your whole house catches on fire. FWIW I have two external hard drives (one at work, one at home) and have grudgingly moved certain files into 'the cloud,' though I worry about security and won't upload most financial documents there.
'm considering also backing up files onto USB thumb drives and storing those with my parents. That should help should we wind up in a city-wide disaster a-la Houston/Harvey. Pathetic as it might sound, our laptops would be among the first things we'd grab in an evacuation.
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Yeah, I have different items stored in various places, depending on their use (sentimental, business, personal, housing, etc). Mostly different degrees of the cloud (from DropBox through various others to CrashPlan). I had been swapping out an external storage device to a safe deposit box, but let that go recently in favour of my new system.
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I live in my bug-out vehicle, a Class A motor home. In AZ they have water stations that fill your jugs for $.25/gal and I have around 4 gal at any given time between my gallon jugs and bottled water. I keep the gas tank on the RV at least half full, and try to keep the fresh water tank half full as well. If I need to leave the RV, it is purse (ID and credit cards to handle the rest of the emergency), cat, computer, prescriptions in that order. The cat carrier is near the door. I have off-site storage of digitized documents on usb hard drives in my storage unit.
I do need to go through things and organize a bit more. However, when we were on pre-evacuation earlier this summer due to the Highline fire, Mom attended a talk at her senior housing complex on how to evacuate. She looked at me and said she would head for my RV as her plan. At the time I was living a mile or so away. She has taken the entire thing to heart, though, and has a to-go bag packed. When the news showed folks held up for 9 hours on I17, I forget why, she started thinking about toilet issues, so we now have large coffee cans (with snug lids) in the cars to use if we are stranded in traffic for too long. She always heads out with a small cooler with water as well. We do live in a desert and she is 86yo, so preparation is a good thing.
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We're working on emergency prep supplies. I'm mainly focused on utility outages (I remember the big blackout) and extreme winter weather. We're mostly focused on shelter-in-place emergencies, but we are starting to work on evacuation bags as well.
Residential fire and tornado are the more likely scenarios, which are typically acute and don't affect quite the same area that hurricanes and earthquakes do. Help should be available within a reasonably short amount of time. Even with the EF5 in Missouri a few years ago, there was assistance available relatively quickly.
I picked up a battery with integrated solar charging and an emergency radio with solar/battery/crank power. Slowly building up stocks of canned and nonperishable foods. Bought a bunch of water in gallon jugs (it was like $0.90/ea).
The one thing I'm undecided on is heat and cooking. My number one concern is a power-out winter storm. I'm looking at propane or kerosene heaters that we could set up on our brick fireplace, they all have safety features, but fire is still a concern. We're having the fireplace cleaned/inspected, but I'm less enthusiastic about keeping sufficient wood on hand versus a tank (or several) of fuel for a heater. Also considering camp stoves, but again, fire. We could conceivably use our private courtyard (buying a grill might make sense) for cooking even in winter, but I'd be a little worried about the amount of cold air we let in coming and going. I'm still working on that one.
Considering keeping some extra gas for the car on hand, but it would need to be rotated through semi-regularly. I couldn't realistically keep more than a couple gallons on hand.
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The one thing I'm undecided on is heat and cooking. My number one concern is a power-out winter storm. I'm looking at propane or kerosene heaters that we could set up on our brick fireplace, they all have safety features, but fire is still a concern. We're having the fireplace cleaned/inspected, but I'm less enthusiastic about keeping sufficient wood on hand versus a tank (or several) of fuel for a heater. Also considering camp stoves, but again, fire. We could conceivably use our private courtyard (buying a grill might make sense) for cooking even in winter, but I'd be a little worried about the amount of cold air we let in coming and going. I'm still working on that one.
Considering keeping some extra gas for the car on hand, but it would need to be rotated through semi-regularly. I couldn't realistically keep more than a couple gallons on hand.
Here's what we do/have. We've got a propane grill with a 20lb tank (plus a spare, so always one that's full) we use pretty regularly. That can serve as our primary way of cooking things should we have an extended power outage. For indoor cooking, we've used a camping stove with butane/propane cylinders. There's always warnings against using in "enclosed spaces" but its functionally the same as having a gas stove in your home. They also make an adapter for my camping stove allowing it to attach to the larger 20lb propane tanks. Because we do a lot of backpacking and camping we already have a nice two-burner (for car camping) as well as a jetBoil. Canisters are about $6 and last for several intensive cooking sessions. The canisters last indefinitely on a shelf, so you can buy a few and just leave them there basically forever.
Our biggest concern is heating during an extended power-outage during a very cold snap (like an ice storm). I'm considering getting a kerosene space heater, but I'm not 100% comfortable having them indoors. Alternatively, we have a small portable generator from another project - it could power a single space heater continously, which should be enough in our small apartment to keep things livable; it would feel cold but bearable. There's the problem of how to run the extension cord (or tie it into our breaker) though...
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No real threat of natural disasters where we live. No floods, hurricanes, tornados, forest fires, blizzards, etc. The only reasonable threat is power outage or some other loss of utilities. I have a couple dozen MREs that I've saved over the years after not eating them during a National Guard drill. We filled a bunch of old fruit juice bottle with water and keep those out in the garage as well. Probably about 20 gallons worth. Those came in handy when we had to turn off our water for a couple of days for some plumbing work. We also keep a decently stocked pantry, though that would probably only last a few days if we were totally cut off. We usually make two big grocery trips each month and towards the end of that two weeks we start running low. We have a good sized propane grill with a second tank always kept full that could be used for cooking. I have some old camping gear/old Army gear but most of it wouldn't be a whole lot of help.
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No real threat of natural disasters where we live. No floods, hurricanes, tornados, forest fires, blizzards, etc.
Well that's pretty lucky. Where do you live, may I ask?
Local topography certainly factors into it of course
there's a few places I've found that show large-scale risks
http://alertsystemsgroup.com/earthquake-early-warning/informative-maps (http://alertsystemsgroup.com/earthquake-early-warning/informative-maps)
http://money.cnn.com/interactive/pf/real-estate/natural-disaster-risk-map/index.html (http://money.cnn.com/interactive/pf/real-estate/natural-disaster-risk-map/index.html)
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No real threat of natural disasters where we live. No floods, hurricanes, tornados, forest fires, blizzards, etc.
Well that's pretty lucky. Where do you live, may I ask?
Local topography certainly factors into it of course
there's a few places I've found that show large-scale risks
http://alertsystemsgroup.com/earthquake-early-warning/informative-maps (http://alertsystemsgroup.com/earthquake-early-warning/informative-maps)
http://money.cnn.com/interactive/pf/real-estate/natural-disaster-risk-map/index.html (http://money.cnn.com/interactive/pf/real-estate/natural-disaster-risk-map/index.html)
ABQ = Albuquerque
Tornadoes can happen anywhere
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The one thing I'm undecided on is heat and cooking. My number one concern is a power-out winter storm. I'm looking at propane or kerosene heaters that we could set up on our brick fireplace, they all have safety features, but fire is still a concern. We're having the fireplace cleaned/inspected, but I'm less enthusiastic about keeping sufficient wood on hand versus a tank (or several) of fuel for a heater. Also considering camp stoves, but again, fire. We could conceivably use our private courtyard (buying a grill might make sense) for cooking even in winter, but I'd be a little worried about the amount of cold air we let in coming and going. I'm still working on that one.
Considering keeping some extra gas for the car on hand, but it would need to be rotated through semi-regularly. I couldn't realistically keep more than a couple gallons on hand.
Here's what we do/have. We've got a propane grill with a 20lb tank (plus a spare, so always one that's full) we use pretty regularly. That can serve as our primary way of cooking things should we have an extended power outage. For indoor cooking, we've used a camping stove with butane/propane cylinders. There's always warnings against using in "enclosed spaces" but its functionally the same as having a gas stove in your home. They also make an adapter for my camping stove allowing it to attach to the larger 20lb propane tanks. Because we do a lot of backpacking and camping we already have a nice two-burner (for car camping) as well as a jetBoil. Canisters are about $6 and last for several intensive cooking sessions. The canisters last indefinitely on a shelf, so you can buy a few and just leave them there basically forever.
Our biggest concern is heating during an extended power-outage during a very cold snap (like an ice storm). I'm considering getting a kerosene space heater, but I'm not 100% comfortable having them indoors. Alternatively, we have a small portable generator from another project - it could power a single space heater continously, which should be enough in our small apartment to keep things livable; it would feel cold but bearable. There's the problem of how to run the extension cord (or tie it into our breaker) though...
I'm more or less on the same page. I was considering propane for cross-compatibility between heating and cooking. The heater I found automatically shuts off for "low oxygen," which doesn't mean not enough oxygen for human life. From what I can tell, burning propane only generates carbon monoxide if there isn't enough oxygen in the space. Cracking a window should allow enough air exchange without overcoming the heat you're generating. You probably wouldn't need to run it continuously either (one hour on, two hours off kind of thing).
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No real threat of natural disasters where we live. No floods, hurricanes, tornados, forest fires, blizzards, etc.
Well that's pretty lucky. Where do you live, may I ask?
Local topography certainly factors into it of course
there's a few places I've found that show large-scale risks
http://alertsystemsgroup.com/earthquake-early-warning/informative-maps (http://alertsystemsgroup.com/earthquake-early-warning/informative-maps)
http://money.cnn.com/interactive/pf/real-estate/natural-disaster-risk-map/index.html (http://money.cnn.com/interactive/pf/real-estate/natural-disaster-risk-map/index.html)
ABQ = Albuquerque
Tornadoes can happen anywhere
Ah, thanks. I should have decyphered that on my own.
At least according to one risk-assessment map Bernalillo County is medium risk for all natural disasters pooled together. It's actually slightly higher than San Francisco and the same as the southern tip of Florida.
Point is - most people drastically underestimate the chance of a natural disaster striking their town, and drastically overrate the risk that natural disasters have in other parts. People in 'tornado alley' tend to think living in 'earthquake country' is nuts, and vice versa, yet both play down their own risks. As humans we are really, really bad at this (hence the need for actuaries)
risk map linked here (http://money.cnn.com/interactive/pf/real-estate/natural-disaster-risk-map/index.html).
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I was confident the place I owned a house was safe. From earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, wildfire. It was awesome. I was aware of the lovely luck of its location. I don't know how many places this is so for. I wanted to keep the house on that count alone, but decided I didn't want to live only in avoidance of such disaster. I don't want disaster, but I do want to live in various places, so I needed to venture out again :)
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I know this thread is general preparedness, but the specific items I have/ need to obtain are:
1. a one-way valve for giving CPR, because you don't know what bugs someone else has
2. Something to smash windows with - I've seen a tiny hammer thing on tv years ago and it's occurred to me that at some point my child will sleep in their own room, and I'd like to be able to break into their room from the outside in the event of a fire.
3. Put a small roll of cling wrap in the first aid kit. Good for covering wounds.
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Oh yes, the tiny window smasher! I have one in my car. If its electrical system gave out -which it did a couple of days ago!- we wouldn't be able to open the windows. These can be critical if a vehicle catches on fire or falls into water. As the latter happened way too often where I last lived, I got one. It also includes a seatbelt cutter and light. The last three car emergencies I've heard of, we would have been able to help the people involved :)
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I know this thread is general preparedness, but the specific items I have/ need to obtain are:
1. a one-way valve for giving CPR, because you don't know what bugs someone else has
2. Something to smash windows with - I've seen a tiny hammer thing on tv years ago and it's occurred to me that at some point my child will sleep in their own room, and I'd like to be able to break into their room from the outside in the event of a fire.
3. Put a small roll of cling wrap in the first aid kit. Good for covering wounds.
1) our Red Cross gives these things away, and they are for sale in just about every drugstore. I've recieved one from every annual re-cert course.
2) just about anything will work, including a small craft hammer or a nearby rock. In a true emergency with your child's life in danger you'll smash the window without any tools, though I recommend using a jacket or t-shirt to protect your arm.
3) cling wrap works in a pinch, but why not pack actual dressings in your first aid kit? I mean, if you're planning ahead and all...
YMMV
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I know this thread is general preparedness, but the specific items I have/ need to obtain are:
1. a one-way valve for giving CPR, because you don't know what bugs someone else has
2. Something to smash windows with - I've seen a tiny hammer thing on tv years ago and it's occurred to me that at some point my child will sleep in their own room, and I'd like to be able to break into their room from the outside in the event of a fire.
3. Put a small roll of cling wrap in the first aid kit. Good for covering wounds.
1) our Red Cross gives these things away, and they are for sale in just about every drugstore. I've recieved one from every annual re-cert course.
2) just about anything will work, including a small craft hammer or a nearby rock. In a true emergency with your child's life in danger you'll smash the window without any tools, though I recommend using a jacket or t-shirt to protect your arm.
3) cling wrap works in a pinch, but why not pack actual dressings in your first aid kit? I mean, if you're planning ahead and all...
YMMV
Oh, I'd have those as well, but cling film can also cover food and I'm pretty sure a few other things if I start looking on the internet...
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One of my first actions will be to acquire some water storage containers (e.g. these (https://www.anacondastores.com/camping-hiking/hydration/water-purification-storage/kookaburra-water-container/p/BP90002086001)) and create a stash of clean drinking water.
You already have a stash of clean drinking water if you've got toilets in your home. The back of each toilet contains potable drinking water that is kept fresh via operation of the toilet. Most people keep bottles to hold drinking water in their home already, and it just takes seconds to lift the top off the tank and fill.
Yes, but I'd rather not rely solely on the relatively small amount of water in my toilet tank.
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I know this thread is general preparedness, but the specific items I have/ need to obtain are:
1. a one-way valve for giving CPR, because you don't know what bugs someone else has
2. Something to smash windows with - I've seen a tiny hammer thing on tv years ago and it's occurred to me that at some point my child will sleep in their own room, and I'd like to be able to break into their room from the outside in the event of a fire.
3. Put a small roll of cling wrap in the first aid kit. Good for covering wounds.
No, your reply is exactly the kind of thing I'm after: specific steps you're taking to improve your preparedness for the issues you as an individual are worried about.
Tiny window smasher is a great idea. If you want something multipurpose, a big mallet is useful for closing paint tins and staking fruit trees, as well as smashing windows ;-) but I definitely want a tiny window smasher for my glovebox. Or maybe a heavy torch that could be used as such...
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Re: water storage, it's pretty easy to buy transparent water jugs rather than opaque.
The recommendation is to wash them out with a tiny bit of bleach every few years to avoid algae etc.
It has also occurred to me that when I install a rainwater collection system for my garden, that will be another source of water around my home in case of an emergency bad enough to require use of toilet and water heater water.
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No real threat of natural disasters where we live. No floods, hurricanes, tornados, forest fires, blizzards, etc.
Well that's pretty lucky. Where do you live, may I ask?
Local topography certainly factors into it of course
there's a few places I've found that show large-scale risks
http://alertsystemsgroup.com/earthquake-early-warning/informative-maps (http://alertsystemsgroup.com/earthquake-early-warning/informative-maps)
http://money.cnn.com/interactive/pf/real-estate/natural-disaster-risk-map/index.html (http://money.cnn.com/interactive/pf/real-estate/natural-disaster-risk-map/index.html)
ABQ = Albuquerque
Tornadoes can happen anywhere
As can asteroid strikes. Historically though, I'm not going to worry about it as the only tornadoes in the last 70 years have been small and caused minimal damage, same with any earthquakes. I guess you could say Volcanoes are the only natural disaster as there are a few small volcanoes a couple of miles away and one super volcano about 50 miles to the north (Valles Caldera). The small volcanoes last erupted around 150,000 years ago and the Valles Caldera about 1.25 million years ago. Albuquerque is located in the Rio Grande Rift which is one of only five active rift valleys in the world.
In my opinion the most like emergency is some sort of civil unrest/loss of utilities. Whether it's from North Korea detonating an EMP, hacking, riots caused by some unforeseen future event, or something else.
We do plan to move into the mountains in the next few years and forest fires will definitely be a risk there. If we build our house (hopefully) I'd like to use something fireproof with a metal roof rather than typical wood frame and stucco. Also, having a rainwater cistern that would help to wet everything down if there was a fire nearby. Of course not having a nice big tree directly next to the house is always a good idea, though that's definitely part of the appeal of living in the mountains in an otherwise treeless area.
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The most likely emergency for any of us are job losses or extended illnesses / temporary disability / family emergency that disrupts our ability to work for some time. Most of us will experience all three at some point in our working lives. Money fixes them.
As far as natural disasters go, we are in wildfire, earthquake and mudslide country.
We keep water, food and medicine for seven people for one week, plus standard camping gear (friends would join us in a natural disaster, since I am a Disaster Service Worker and would be called out).
And, our best preparedness plan is to help, and be helped by, our neighbors. We develop social and trust ties with our immediate neighbors, with our neighborhood, and in our larger community so that we can rely on each other when we need help.
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No real threat of natural disasters where we live. No floods, hurricanes, tornados, forest fires, blizzards, etc.
Well that's pretty lucky. Where do you live, may I ask?
Local topography certainly factors into it of course
there's a few places I've found that show large-scale risks
http://alertsystemsgroup.com/earthquake-early-warning/informative-maps (http://alertsystemsgroup.com/earthquake-early-warning/informative-maps)
http://money.cnn.com/interactive/pf/real-estate/natural-disaster-risk-map/index.html (http://money.cnn.com/interactive/pf/real-estate/natural-disaster-risk-map/index.html)
ABQ = Albuquerque
Tornadoes can happen anywhere
As can asteroid strikes. Historically though, I'm not going to worry about it as the only tornadoes in the last 70 years have been small and caused minimal damage, same with any earthquakes. I guess you could say Volcanoes are the only natural disaster as there are a few small volcanoes a couple of miles away and one super volcano about 50 miles to the north (Valles Caldera). The small volcanoes last erupted around 150,000 years ago and the Valles Caldera about 1.25 million years ago. Albuquerque is located in the Rio Grande Rift which is one of only five active rift valleys in the world.
In my opinion the most like emergency is some sort of civil unrest/loss of utilities. Whether it's from North Korea detonating an EMP, hacking, riots caused by some unforeseen future event, or something else.
We do plan to move into the mountains in the next few years and forest fires will definitely be a risk there. If we build our house (hopefully) I'd like to use something fireproof with a metal roof rather than typical wood frame and stucco. Also, having a rainwater cistern that would help to wet everything down if there was a fire nearby. Of course not having a nice big tree directly next to the house is always a good idea, though that's definitely part of the appeal of living in the mountains in an otherwise treeless area.
What you describe for fire prevention will help you against smaller brush fires, but will do little to protect against a full on forest fire. Wetting down your house is akin to covering your car in bubble-wrap to lessen the severity of collisions; both technically correct and functionally useless. Cutting down nearby trees is the best solution and the forest service recommends cutting back everything within 100 feet of your home; 300 feet if you are in a particularly fire prone area. Few are willing to do that (or have a large enough property line). Trees in/around your property should be trimmed back so that the branches are at least 10ft from other trees.
I lived through several wildfires while in California. The cinders can jump a quarter mile in even mild winds, and the heat is enough to melt the siding off homes even when the fire itself never comes closer than 100 feet.
Tl/dr: don't underestimate the power of a large wildfire or assume that small steps like wetting down your property can do anything to save it.
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Re: water storage, it's pretty easy to buy transparent water jugs rather than opaque.
The recommendation is to wash them out with a tiny bit of bleach every few years to avoid algae etc.
It has also occurred to me that when I install a rainwater collection system for my garden, that will be another source of water around my home in case of an emergency bad enough to require use of toilet and water heater water.
I just don't get why you'd buy a giant jug like the one you linked when you can get jugs already filled with water at Costco or Walmart for a lower cost (<$1/gal), and you never have to worry about cleaning them out.
Rainwater collection is a great idea.
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Re: water storage, it's pretty easy to buy transparent water jugs rather than opaque.
The recommendation is to wash them out with a tiny bit of bleach every few years to avoid algae etc.
It has also occurred to me that when I install a rainwater collection system for my garden, that will be another source of water around my home in case of an emergency bad enough to require use of toilet and water heater water.
I just don't get why you'd buy a giant jug like the one you linked when you can get jugs already filled with water at Costco or Walmart for a lower cost (<$1/gal), and you never have to worry about cleaning them out.
Rainwater collection is a great idea.
Well for a start, Costco and Walmart don't exist on my continent ;-)
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Tiny window smasher is a great idea. If you want something multipurpose, a big mallet is useful for closing paint tins and staking fruit trees, as well as smashing windows ;-) but I definitely want a tiny window smasher for my glovebox. Or maybe a heavy torch that could be used as such...
We have an escape hammer in the glove box and a D cell Maglite next to the bed (smashes windows or intruders equally well) :)
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I'm struggling with water. We have a bug out bag with a very small amount of water in it, and a water purification straw, but I'd like to have more water lest we have to shelter in place for a while.
We have a ton of food in our pantry, and a grill on which to cook it if we stay in our home. And our bag has some shelf stable survival bars. I tasted one and they are palatable. Not yummy, but if I've resorted to eating them, I doubt culinary delights will be much on my mind.
Kit has a bunch of other stuff--fire starter, flashlight/radio/charger (solar and hand crank), thermal blanket, small basic tent, first aid kit, basic sanitation items, and a bunch of other small stuff. Really, I think water is the one place we are weak. Our freezer is larger than we need so I do keep a lot of frozen water in there to make it more efficient, so that's probably a day or two's worth if we need it, I guess. Husband would likely be taken care of (military, and would likely be put to work in most disasters and thus fed and watered), but I hate to count on that.
After living through the 3/11 quake in Japan and the aftermath (though I was far enough away to thankfully be spared from any real danger or damage), I'm a bit paranoid about these things. We don't have a water heater for our home (military housing and to be honest I have no idea where our hot water comes from, but there's no water heater in our unit) and our toilet tanks were growing mold so I've had to put bleach tablets in them, unfortunately. (Yes, it was actually molding inside the tank.)
Also, in one move or another, I seem to have lost my potassium iodide tables, prescribed to me when the cloud shifted and we had increase radiation in my 'hood. Unlikely I'd need them, perhaps, but I was holding on to them just in case. Damn.
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Re: water storage, it's pretty easy to buy transparent water jugs rather than opaque.
The recommendation is to wash them out with a tiny bit of bleach every few years to avoid algae etc.
It has also occurred to me that when I install a rainwater collection system for my garden, that will be another source of water around my home in case of an emergency bad enough to require use of toilet and water heater water.
I just don't get why you'd buy a giant jug like the one you linked when you can get jugs already filled with water at Costco or Walmart for a lower cost (<$1/gal), and you never have to worry about cleaning them out.
Rainwater collection is a great idea.
Well for a start, Costco and Walmart don't exist on my continent ;-)
All right, Aldi or Woolworths then? I suspect no matter where you are pre-bottled water costs less than those big empty jugs.
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Water is always among the hardest, as it is heavy, takes up space and is prone to mold/algae unless its sterilized.
Villanelle - what is your climate like? Are there freshwater streams/lakes nearby? If so, a filter/sterilizer combo may be one brick in your emergency preparedness kit. Certainly a pack of water treatment tablets (tiny, shelf stable and each good for a liter of water) can get you through a few days, though its bad for your health to use those for weeks on end.
A few cases of bottled water stored in a closet somewhere is another possibility. Unopened they don't go bad, though they'll taste plastic-y after a couple of years. At a bare minimum you want 2 liters per person per day (though 4 is much better and allows for cooking). You can also jar your own using basic canning techniques, but I've never found that to be cost efficient.
When you have advanced warning you can fill just about anything with tap water and it will be fine to drink for several days. Spaghetti pots, old 2-liter bottles, etc.
Interestingly, Anheiser-Busch distributes water in aluminum cans during natural disasters. They basically use their facilities to fill cans with tap water and then stockpile it throughout their distribution chain. I really wonder why this isn't done more; I thick it would be easier to store a few cases of 12oz cans of water than those round plastic bottles of similar size.
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I'm struggling with water. We have a bug out bag with a very small amount of water in it, and a water purification straw, but I'd like to have more water lest we have to shelter in place for a while.
We have a ton of food in our pantry, and a grill on which to cook it if we stay in our home. And our bag has some shelf stable survival bars. I tasted one and they are palatable. Not yummy, but if I've resorted to eating them, I doubt culinary delights will be much on my mind.
Kit has a bunch of other stuff--fire starter, flashlight/radio/charger (solar and hand crank), thermal blanket, small basic tent, first aid kit, basic sanitation items, and a bunch of other small stuff. Really, I think water is the one place we are weak. Our freezer is larger than we need so I do keep a lot of frozen water in there to make it more efficient, so that's probably a day or two's worth if we need it, I guess. Husband would likely be taken care of (military, and would likely be put to work in most disasters and thus fed and watered), but I hate to count on that.
After living through the 3/11 quake in Japan and the aftermath (though I was far enough away to thankfully be spared from any real danger or damage), I'm a bit paranoid about these things. We don't have a water heater for our home (military housing and to be honest I have no idea where our hot water comes from, but there's no water heater in our unit) and our toilet tanks were growing mold so I've had to put bleach tablets in them, unfortunately. (Yes, it was actually molding inside the tank.)
Also, in one move or another, I seem to have lost my potassium iodide tables, prescribed to me when the cloud shifted and we had increase radiation in my 'hood. Unlikely I'd need them, perhaps, but I was holding on to them just in case. Damn.
Had never read about potassium iodide, although it makes a ton of sense- it's literally the opposite to what we do (as in healthcare professionals, I haven't personally given it to anyone) with overactive thyroid tissues, where we GIVE radioactive iodine to kill the tissue off.
Also of note: you can buy it online. There's a really high dose one called "iOSAT". 14 day supply for $8. Given recent climate and some ah... details about my geography I won't divulge, I think this is a pretty good idea for us, so that'll go in the kit.
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I bought a torch yesterday -- one of those super powerful ones with about a dozen LEDs powered by those big square 6V batteries so it should last for quite a long while, and for AU$10 it came with a spare battery. I'll now keep my eye out for a LED lantern that uses the same type of battery.
Is it nice and heavy? If yes, where did you buy it?
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Really enjoying this thread. Admittedly have not considered many of the points raised here- the luxury of never experiencing any type of disaster I suppose.
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Good for you getting this started! Thanks for posting. I can use the kick in the pants. We moved 6 months ago and got rid of stock at that time. Recently I've been meaning to build the emergency stores back up.
I devised a great water solution using crap I have around the house already. Pre-kids I used to brew beer. I've been intending on selling the stuff... and then it dawned on me. Instead of selling food grade liquid storage containers and then buying other food grade liquid storage containers, I'm just going to fill the ones I already have. What?! That's about 5x5 = 25 or so gallons (100 L) of storage. Better than nothing. Good for starters. I'll follow the advice of my CERT trainer and replace the water every time I change the clock for daylight savings.
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Water is always among the hardest, as it is heavy, takes up space and is prone to mold/algae unless its sterilized.
Villanelle - what is your climate like? Are there freshwater streams/lakes nearby? If so, a filter/sterilizer combo may be one brick in your emergency preparedness kit. Certainly a pack of water treatment tablets (tiny, shelf stable and each good for a liter of water) can get you through a few days, though its bad for your health to use those for weeks on end.
A few cases of bottled water stored in a closet somewhere is another possibility. Unopened they don't go bad, though they'll taste plastic-y after a couple of years. At a bare minimum you want 2 liters per person per day (though 4 is much better and allows for cooking). You can also jar your own using basic canning techniques, but I've never found that to be cost efficient.
When you have advanced warning you can fill just about anything with tap water and it will be fine to drink for several days. Spaghetti pots, old 2-liter bottles, etc.
Interestingly, Anheiser-Busch distributes water in aluminum cans during natural disasters. They basically use their facilities to fill cans with tap water and then stockpile it throughout their distribution chain. I really wonder why this isn't done more; I thick it would be easier to store a few cases of 12oz cans of water than those round plastic bottles of similar size.
I'm in pretty urban Tokyo, so definitely no streams or natural water sources nearby. I guess the solution is just to buy regular bottled water and find some place to store it, but it takes up so much space that way!
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Water is always among the hardest, as it is heavy, takes up space and is prone to mold/algae unless its sterilized.
Villanelle - what is your climate like? Are there freshwater streams/lakes nearby? If so, a filter/sterilizer combo may be one brick in your emergency preparedness kit. Certainly a pack of water treatment tablets (tiny, shelf stable and each good for a liter of water) can get you through a few days, though its bad for your health to use those for weeks on end.
A few cases of bottled water stored in a closet somewhere is another possibility. Unopened they don't go bad, though they'll taste plastic-y after a couple of years. At a bare minimum you want 2 liters per person per day (though 4 is much better and allows for cooking). You can also jar your own using basic canning techniques, but I've never found that to be cost efficient.
When you have advanced warning you can fill just about anything with tap water and it will be fine to drink for several days. Spaghetti pots, old 2-liter bottles, etc.
Interestingly, Anheiser-Busch distributes water in aluminum cans during natural disasters. They basically use their facilities to fill cans with tap water and then stockpile it throughout their distribution chain. I really wonder why this isn't done more; I thick it would be easier to store a few cases of 12oz cans of water than those round plastic bottles of similar size.
I'm in pretty urban Tokyo, so definitely no streams or natural water sources nearby. I guess the solution is just to buy regular bottled water and find some place to store it, but it takes up so much space that way!
Being in Tokyo, I doubt you have a car, but for anyone else in an urban environment who does: we kept extra supplies in our car when we lived downtown. You need a car kit anyway, we just made it a little extra robust. It was in a parking spot in our building ($$$, but it was close and secure and we always had a spot at the weird hours we came and went).
All this to say- get creative if you need to! Our "coffee table" is an old travel trunk. We kept work and school papers in there, but could have easily kept emergency supplies out of the way.
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Nah. My office has boxes filled with emergency food and water, maintained by people whose job it is to come up with response plans. If shit hits the fan, I'll just walk over there.
Water can also be boiled using a camping stove and/or tablets.
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Nah. My office has boxes filled with emergency food and water, maintained by people whose job it is to come up with response plans. If shit hits the fan, I'll just walk over there.
Water can also be boiled using a camping stove and/or tablets.
If SHTF my National Guard unit would probably be activated. So after dropping my family off at my in-law's house I would head to the armory where there's plenty of supplies (and guns of course).
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Just tossing this out there after reading previous responses:
Cash. Many disasters will completely disrupt the ability to use credit cards and take money out of an ATM (...no power... no mobile connections...).
As much as I hate keeping a "cash drag" its a good idea to keep a few hundred$ (or your currency's equivalent) on hand in small bills.
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As much as I hate keeping a "cash drag" its a good idea to keep a few hundred$ (or your currency's equivalent) on hand in small bills.
Any home owner should keep 1000 bones cash on hand and its no drag. The gents doing work in the neighbors yard? Or other tradesmen in the neighborhood? Cash in hand for some side work and you will like the price you get. Cash can sometimes get you big purchases cheaper too from independent merchants that don't want to pay the credit card fees.
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Anybody have thoughts on communications?
I'm considering picking up a set of FRS/GMRS radios that can run off of AAs and have channel privacy codes. My mom lives across town (about 2 miles), and we would stash two more in our bags. I'm not sure how much more robust the cell system is now than during the blackout, but I do remember very limited cell service (even SMS).
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Anybody have thoughts on communications?
I'm considering picking up a set of FRS/GMRS radios that can run off of AAs and have channel privacy codes. My mom lives across town (about 2 miles), and we would stash two more in our bags. I'm not sure how much more robust the cell system is now than during the blackout, but I do remember very limited cell service (even SMS).
I'm interested but have not purchased a police/ems scanner to listen for perhaps more useful news. Yes a lot of what they use is now encrypted so there is perhaps limited utility here.
Radio com is tough for amateurs. We use it boating... you agree to talk to your buddy Bob on say channel 36 and 15 minutes later he's changed channels accidentally or isn't listening anymore and you have no idea what channel he is on. Heck you can text him and he might not know! (or, he is busy on 16 listening to the train-wreck of the coastguard trying to save someone despite themselves.) oh, and there is the thing if you hold down talk while waiting to hear a response, well, you never will.
Without the chaos of an actual emergency people just seem to have a hard time being able to check in on the same channel at the designated time.
Of course, we are assuming everyone is getting the appropriate FCC license. :)
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I decided today that once we get our next place to live (hopefully soon), I will create a closet just for our emergency supplies. It will include an inflatable raft. (And yes, definitely communications stuff, but I don't know what yet.)
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I know this thread is general preparedness, but the specific items I have/ need to obtain are:
1. a one-way valve for giving CPR, because you don't know what bugs someone else has
2. Something to smash windows with - I've seen a tiny hammer thing on tv years ago and it's occurred to me that at some point my child will sleep in their own room, and I'd like to be able to break into their room from the outside in the event of a fire.
3. Put a small roll of cling wrap in the first aid kit. Good for covering wounds.
No, your reply is exactly the kind of thing I'm after: specific steps you're taking to improve your preparedness for the issues you as an individual are worried about.
Tiny window smasher is a great idea. If you want something multipurpose, a big mallet is useful for closing paint tins and staking fruit trees, as well as smashing windows ;-) but I definitely want a tiny window smasher for my glovebox. Or maybe a heavy torch that could be used as such...
The metal brackets on a car's head rest work too.
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I know this thread is general preparedness, but the specific items I have/ need to obtain are:
1. a one-way valve for giving CPR, because you don't know what bugs someone else has
2. Something to smash windows with - I've seen a tiny hammer thing on tv years ago and it's occurred to me that at some point my child will sleep in their own room, and I'd like to be able to break into their room from the outside in the event of a fire.
3. Put a small roll of cling wrap in the first aid kit. Good for covering wounds.
No, your reply is exactly the kind of thing I'm after: specific steps you're taking to improve your preparedness for the issues you as an individual are worried about.
Tiny window smasher is a great idea. If you want something multipurpose, a big mallet is useful for closing paint tins and staking fruit trees, as well as smashing windows ;-) but I definitely want a tiny window smasher for my glovebox. Or maybe a heavy torch that could be used as such...
The metal brackets on a car's head rest work too.
GOOD POINT.
Are you following me around the forum telling me things I need to know? Because that's how it feels right now :-P
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I know this thread is general preparedness, but the specific items I have/ need to obtain are:
1. a one-way valve for giving CPR, because you don't know what bugs someone else has
2. Something to smash windows with - I've seen a tiny hammer thing on tv years ago and it's occurred to me that at some point my child will sleep in their own room, and I'd like to be able to break into their room from the outside in the event of a fire.
3. Put a small roll of cling wrap in the first aid kit. Good for covering wounds.
No, your reply is exactly the kind of thing I'm after: specific steps you're taking to improve your preparedness for the issues you as an individual are worried about.
Tiny window smasher is a great idea. If you want something multipurpose, a big mallet is useful for closing paint tins and staking fruit trees, as well as smashing windows ;-) but I definitely want a tiny window smasher for my glovebox. Or maybe a heavy torch that could be used as such...
The metal brackets on a car's head rest work too.
GOOD POINT.
Are you following me around the forum telling me things I need to know? Because that's how it feels right now :-P
Eeek!
Marty does tell me I'm bossy...
:D
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I know this thread is general preparedness, but the specific items I have/ need to obtain are:
1. a one-way valve for giving CPR, because you don't know what bugs someone else has
2. Something to smash windows with - I've seen a tiny hammer thing on tv years ago and it's occurred to me that at some point my child will sleep in their own room, and I'd like to be able to break into their room from the outside in the event of a fire.
3. Put a small roll of cling wrap in the first aid kit. Good for covering wounds.
No, your reply is exactly the kind of thing I'm after: specific steps you're taking to improve your preparedness for the issues you as an individual are worried about.
Tiny window smasher is a great idea. If you want something multipurpose, a big mallet is useful for closing paint tins and staking fruit trees, as well as smashing windows ;-) but I definitely want a tiny window smasher for my glovebox. Or maybe a heavy torch that could be used as such...
The metal brackets on a car's head rest work too.
GOOD POINT.
Are you following me around the forum telling me things I need to know? Because that's how it feels right now :-P
Eeek!
Marty does tell me I'm bossy...
:D
It's working! So keep doing it.
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Anybody have thoughts on communications?
I'm considering picking up a set of FRS/GMRS radios that can run off of AAs and have channel privacy codes. My mom lives across town (about 2 miles), and we would stash two more in our bags. I'm not sure how much more robust the cell system is now than during the blackout, but I do remember very limited cell service (even SMS).
During emergency situations, don't count on the local mobile (GSM/CDMA) networks to be operational. Assume best case scenario under worst case conditions to be SMS functioning with high latency and slow delivery. I speak of this with experience from being out in the thick of the May 31st 2013 El Reno tornado (http://www.techmeshugana.com/2013/06/may-31-in-oklahoma-city/) and working in EmComm network support for a while. With this in mind, considering the newer software available...
On top of just owning an FRS/GPRS radio, one of my favorite new apps for Android is called Serval Mesh (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.servalproject&hl=en) from the Serval Project (http://www.servalproject.org). It's basically a local ad-hock WiFi/Bluetooth mesh network app that enables VoIP calls, texting and file sharing on Android handsets that's completely network independent, utilizes your existing phone number for contact, and the app can be easily shared to other phones for install. Works best on a rooted device running third party firmware like LineageOS (https://lineageos.org) or Resurrection Remix (http://www.resurrectionremix.com), as then you can use your phone as a node in the mesh network. Given most unrooted Android devices can't act as WiFi mesh nodes (they can only connect to), Bluetooth is a good networking fallback (and why it's included). I may be one of the last remaining Windows Phone users on the planet day to day, but the BOB/GoBag now has a cheap MotoE running Ressurection Remix loaded with Serval Mesh specifically for this purpose. I deeply dislike Android, but it is at least good for something.
Couple that with an amateur radio license (which you should get for the FRS/GPRS radio anyway), pick up a couple compatible UBNT (https://www.ubnt.com) AirOS devices (such as the NanoStation LocoM or Bullet), and set up both a fixed point and possibly a portable AREDN (http://www.aredn.org/about-us) node or two to help build up a data mesh network for your area. You can do simpler WiFi mesh networking with cheap TPLink equipment and OpenWRT, but a radio license and the AREDN option opens up bands for traffic that couldn't otherwise be used in crowded airspace for trunking between nodes and provides additional EmComm infrastructure.
Of course, all this relies on having power available, so keep around some solar chargers and batteries as well. Also, this is post-disaster communications. KISS. Don't depend on two-way in the middle of the madness. Coordinate in advance.
As for the FRS/GPRS equipment, understand that "channel privacy codes" don't mean much. It's not actual encryption and not actually private (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zht-Y_QsZ2I), it's just a tone filter to filter out possible cross-chatter on the same band from other users.
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Radio com is tough for amateurs. We use it boating... you agree to talk to your buddy Bob on say channel 36 and 15 minutes later he's changed channels accidentally or isn't listening anymore and you have no idea what channel he is on. Heck you can text him and he might not know! (or, he is busy on 16 listening to the train-wreck of the coastguard trying to save someone despite themselves.) oh, and there is the thing if you hold down talk while waiting to hear a response, well, you never will.
Without the chaos of an actual emergency people just seem to have a hard time being able to check in on the same channel at the designated time.
Of course, we are assuming everyone is getting the appropriate FCC license. :)
Did FRS radios suddenly require an FCC license? My first job was in communications for a school district, so we had big radios and licenses and all that. I remember when FRS first came out, and one of the selling points was that you didn't need a license.
We've both used radios before, so I don't think we'd have trouble coordinating and not being stupid. I'd probably type up a procedure (i.e. try to make contact during the first 15 minutes of the hour, start on X channel and go down the list until you find one that isn't in use).
Of course, all this relies on having power available, so keep around some solar chargers and batteries as well. Also, this is post-disaster communications. KISS. Don't depend on two-way in the middle of the madness. Coordinate in advance.
As for the FRS/GPRS equipment, understand that "channel privacy codes" don't mean much. It's not actual encryption and not actually private (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zht-Y_QsZ2I), it's just a tone filter to filter out possible cross-chatter on the same band from other users.
I just received my 2200mAh solar battery last week, and the radios I was looking at are rechargeable (micro USB) or AA compatible. I understand the privacy codes don't mean "private," I just want to be able to avoid cross-chatter.
It's not so much for complex communications, but would be more for checking in and making sure everything is cool.
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Did FRS radios suddenly require an FCC license?
[/quote]
FRS no, GMRS technically requires a licensee in your group. With some experience, radios are a great tool.
/libertarian rant/
I would certainly hope in a true emergency/natural disaster the authorities are more concerned with looters than your mom broadcasting an occasional check in message on the GMRS instead of FRS.
/end libertarian rant/
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My husband has always laughed at my annual hurricane prep in June. After Harvey, he's not laughing anymore! We didn't flood, but our streets and the neighborhoods around us did. We were stuck in the neighborhood for 5 days. Some of our neighbors were without power for days.
Thanks to Harvey, I'm upgrading my emergency kit to include:
a) a small ax and a white towel in the attic (so if we retreat to the attic and floodwaters follow us, we can get to the roof and wave for help)
b) I downloaded the Zello app to my phone - this was in widespread use for amateur water rescues and helped save several of my friends
c) Rubber boots
d) a set of face masks and work gloves - it was near impossible to find these in stores after the flood waters subsided. We came out relatively unscathed, so we volunteered to help others. So many volunteers didn't have proper PPE like this while they were tearing out moldy drywall and carpets. We happened to have some for a home project we'd been working on, so we were protected.
e) a big tarp, in case a leak develops in the roof.
Important item my neighbors forgot to have in their emergency supplies -- extra toilet paper!
When the stores reopened after the flooding, bread, milk, and eggs were hot items. I always keep several loaves of bread in the freezer and several cans of evaporated milk in the pantry, so we were good.
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GOOD POINT.
Are you following me around the forum telling me things I need to know? Because that's how it feels right now :-P
Eeek!
Marty does tell me I'm bossy...
:D
It's working! So keep doing it.
She knows everything this girl. I only had to complain down the phone that I lost my apple id / password and within 15 seconds she'd reset it for me.
I would have sat there for days fuming and getting frustrated with why Apple wants to know everything about me including my credit card before letting me download a bloody free app.
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Doing something easy and less obvious this week: writing down phone numbers on paper. Given I only know three or four phone numbers by heart, having a backup system is a very good idea.
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Doing something easy and less obvious this week: writing down phone numbers on paper. Given I only know three or four phone numbers by heart, having a backup system is a very good idea.
Loved this idea. Printed wallet cards for both DH and I with the #s for our family members, closest friends, and neighbors we know. Just did tiny print and them I'm taping them all together as a 'fake laminated' approach. I'll do 2 more today, to put into our emergency packs. Also printed a big size one out for inside our cupboard at home.
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I'm struggling with water. We have a bug out bag with a very small amount of water in it, and a water purification straw, but I'd like to have more water lest we have to shelter in place for a while.
We have a ton of food in our pantry, and a grill on which to cook it if we stay in our home. And our bag has some shelf stable survival bars. I tasted one and they are palatable. Not yummy, but if I've resorted to eating them, I doubt culinary delights will be much on my mind.
Kit has a bunch of other stuff--fire starter, flashlight/radio/charger (solar and hand crank), thermal blanket, small basic tent, first aid kit, basic sanitation items, and a bunch of other small stuff. Really, I think water is the one place we are weak. Our freezer is larger than we need so I do keep a lot of frozen water in there to make it more efficient, so that's probably a day or two's worth if we need it, I guess. Husband would likely be taken care of (military, and would likely be put to work in most disasters and thus fed and watered), but I hate to count on that.
After living through the 3/11 quake in Japan and the aftermath (though I was far enough away to thankfully be spared from any real danger or damage), I'm a bit paranoid about these things. We don't have a water heater for our home (military housing and to be honest I have no idea where our hot water comes from, but there's no water heater in our unit) and our toilet tanks were growing mold so I've had to put bleach tablets in them, unfortunately. (Yes, it was actually molding inside the tank.)
Also, in one move or another, I seem to have lost my potassium iodide tables, prescribed to me when the cloud shifted and we had increase radiation in my 'hood. Unlikely I'd need them, perhaps, but I was holding on to them just in case. Damn.
Had never read about potassium iodide, although it makes a ton of sense- it's literally the opposite to what we do (as in healthcare professionals, I haven't personally given it to anyone) with overactive thyroid tissues, where we GIVE radioactive iodine to kill the tissue off.
Also of note: you can buy it online. There's a really high dose one called "iOSAT". 14 day supply for $8. Given recent climate and some ah... details about my geography I won't divulge, I think this is a pretty good idea for us, so that'll go in the kit.
In my area potassium iodide is distributed for free by the government to minors. Adults can buy it at the pharmacy for pretty cheap and it's recommended people do so. We live in a 50-mile radius of two untrustworthy nuclear facilities. They are not in my country, so our government can't do anything about it except hand out potassium iodide and pressure the neighbouring government.
The good thing is, we live in the one of the few areas of our country not sensitive to flooding.
I keep bottled water in the pantry, currently for 3 days, which is the official recommendation. I'm planning on increasing that to a week, just in case. Bottled water costs next to nothing. I just need to put up a bit more shelving in the pantry.
We keep canned foods in stock that we use anyway, things like kidneybeans, sweetcorn, fish. We have wet wipes (great idea) too and plenty of batteries and power banks (s/o is a tech geek with a phobia of being offline)
I'm a quilter so we have more than enough blankets. We also have camping and hiking gear.
I'm working on getting some more cash in the house. We're not used to paying with cash but in case of emergency having cash is great.
The emergency contact details are a great idea too! I only know my grandma's phone number by heart because she hasn't changed it since I was a kid. My partner's phone number is written down in my diary. I don't actually have phone numbers for anyone on his side of the family. I know them and see them a lot, but we each deal with staying in contact with our own families.
Still a lot of work to do, thanks for inspiring me!
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I haven't seen this or maybe I missed it, but a tarp is always good to have for shelter from rain - I had a big thunderstorm that pulled down a tree onto the roof once. Putting up a tarp saved the insides and us from the water. I saw a picture from the hurricanes with some woman using an inflatable mattress to float her cats and a tarp to keep herself warm. Clever stuff to have.
I find that a well-supplied toolbox is also useful. When I was small there was a tornado that came through my town. We sheltered in an inside closet. My dad had to break down the door with a hammer to get us out afterward because of damage to the house caused it to sit poorly. I keep a hammer in my closet now even though I'm out of tornado area.
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Doing something easy and less obvious this week: writing down phone numbers on paper. Given I only know three or four phone numbers by heart, having a backup system is a very good idea.
Love this idea. If not for an emergency, then it is very helpful if I drop my phone into water again...sigh!
My neighbourhood recently had the water turned off for 7 hours or so due to some sort of problem and it made me very aware of how vulnerable we were. I've been buying 10 litre (2.6 gallon) containers of water from my local supermarket - they stack pretty well and have a handle so they are not too difficult to carry or move around. I have decided I will keep at least 8 of them on hand which would give the family about 5 days supply of water in an emergency.
I'm pretty lucky that where I live is generally reasonably unscathed by most natural disasters. However I do worry about the food supply chain being disrupted (eg, power blackouts, transport strikes etc) so am working on getting about 2 weeks supply of food in the house. It's all stuff we normally eat, so as we use something up in the kitchen, the replacement comes from the back pantry and the back pantry gets the new item. In the old days, our supermarkets used to keep things "out the back". Nowadays, most supermarkets work on daily deliveries so if there is no delivery, there is no "out the back" to fall back on.
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I think that disruption of the food supply is the biggest risk for everyone. Even if you don't live in an area that's sensitive to natural disaster (although freak unexpected disasters can always happen, however low the chances) many other places are sensitive to disaster, political unrest, war, and in our globalized economy we are dependent on them. Once the supply chain is cut somewhere, another place is running out of staples soon. And yes, because many companies now keep very little stock, a few days of disruption causes a lot more trouble than it used to. Every time the local water supply is having trouble anywhere in my country, all the stores in the wide area run out of bottled water within the hour. Now, normally we're talking about small scale problems and the local authorities generally have an alternative method of providing drinking water set up within 12 hours, but if that didn't happen, there'd be massive problems. It's shocking that many people need to run to the store when their water is unexpectedly down for 12 hours.
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I think that disruption of the food supply is the biggest risk for everyone. Even if you don't live in an area that's sensitive to natural disaster (although freak unexpected disasters can always happen, however low the chances) many other places are sensitive to disaster, political unrest, war, and in our globalized economy we are dependent on them. Once the supply chain is cut somewhere, another place is running out of staples soon. And yes, because many companies now keep very little stock, a few days of disruption causes a lot more trouble than it used to. Every time the local water supply is having trouble anywhere in my country, all the stores in the wide area run out of bottled water within the hour. Now, normally we're talking about small scale problems and the local authorities generally have an alternative method of providing drinking water set up within 12 hours, but if that didn't happen, there'd be massive problems. It's shocking that many people need to run to the store when their water is unexpectedly down for 12 hours.
Yes, pictures of empty store shelves are pretty much universal anytime there's a disaster or supply chain disruption. And while having some sort of water filtration system could help it doesn't do you any good if there's no water to filter (i.e. in the desert) or if the primary water supply is contaminated with something that can't be filtered out. I'm reminded of a chemical spill somewhere on the east coast a few years ago. I can't remember if it was a pipeline, railcar, or something else but there was a chemical that got into the river which provided drinking water for the community. The chemical was water soluble and therefore could not be removed with any sort of conventional filter that would might use if camping or backpacking. The only solution was to have bottled water and then to wait a few weeks for the concentration of the chemical to drop to safe levels.
We keep probably 10-20 gallons in our garage in old plastic juice bottles (milk jugs don't last, different kind of plastic). Plus another case or two of bottled water. I would be tempted to buy a large 55-gallon plastic drum but it would be almost impossible to move once full if we needed to leave whereas a bunch of jugs of water can easily be thrown in a vehicle in minutes. Same with a couple of boxes of old MREs. Also those cost about $100 while the old plastic juice containers are free.
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For US people- Costco has bottled water $2 off flats right now, so I got one of their huge flats (24 bottles? I think?) for like $2.25 So that's like 12L total of water unless my math is totally skewed, and all plastic wrapped together for easy storage and movement.
Some of the first aid kit items I had put on subscribe and save with amazon are shipping out this week, so I'll replenish my gauze stores (went ahead and bought non sterile 4x4s, I'll separate it into baggies), and butterfly bandages, and a SAM splint type item (off brand, but same idea) and some individual packets of triple antibiotic ointment. In my cart, waiting on ordering (good frugal pause there) is oral rehydration salts, the potassium iodide tablets, the blood clotting powder, and drinking water purification tablets.
It's coming together. Once everything arrives, I need to haul out both car kits and our packs and divvy up supplies between them (and reorganize).
It's amazing to me how much EMT supplies you can just BUY online. You can even buy emergency airways and suture kits and... it's kinda crazy!
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For US people- Costco has bottled water $2 off flats right now, so I got one of their huge flats (24 bottles? I think?) for like $2.25 So that's like 12L total of water unless my math is totally skewed, and all plastic wrapped together for easy storage and movement.
Some of the first aid kit items I had put on subscribe and save with amazon are shipping out this week, so I'll replenish my gauze stores (went ahead and bought non sterile 4x4s, I'll separate it into baggies), and butterfly bandages, and a SAM splint type item (off brand, but same idea) and some individual packets of triple antibiotic ointment. In my cart, waiting on ordering (good frugal pause there) is oral rehydration salts, the potassium iodide tablets, the blood clotting powder, and drinking water purification tablets.
It's coming together. Once everything arrives, I need to haul out both car kits and our packs and divvy up supplies between them (and reorganize).
It's amazing to me how much EMT supplies you can just BUY online. You can even buy emergency airways and suture kits and... it's kinda crazy!
I learned how to give an IV as part of a combat lifesaver course in the Army. Granted it was about a decade ago so I might be a bit rusty but with the right equipment it's pretty simple. Unfortunately, IV fluid, even simple saline, is considered a prescription item and is therefore not available for purchase by the general public. Plus it goes bad after a while. I suppose administering an IV to someone else would be violating some law or regulation but obviously I wouldn't be all that concerned if it were a family member and it was an emergency situation.
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For US people- Costco has bottled water $2 off flats right now, so I got one of their huge flats (24 bottles? I think?) for like $2.25 So that's like 12L total of water unless my math is totally skewed, and all plastic wrapped together for easy storage and movement.
Some of the first aid kit items I had put on subscribe and save with amazon are shipping out this week, so I'll replenish my gauze stores (went ahead and bought non sterile 4x4s, I'll separate it into baggies), and butterfly bandages, and a SAM splint type item (off brand, but same idea) and some individual packets of triple antibiotic ointment. In my cart, waiting on ordering (good frugal pause there) is oral rehydration salts, the potassium iodide tablets, the blood clotting powder, and drinking water purification tablets.
It's coming together. Once everything arrives, I need to haul out both car kits and our packs and divvy up supplies between them (and reorganize).
It's amazing to me how much EMT supplies you can just BUY online. You can even buy emergency airways and suture kits and... it's kinda crazy!
I learned how to give an IV as part of a combat lifesaver course in the Army. Granted it was about a decade ago so I might be a bit rusty but with the right equipment it's pretty simple. Unfortunately, IV fluid, even simple saline, is considered a prescription item and is therefore not available for purchase by the general public. Plus it goes bad after a while. I suppose administering an IV to someone else would be violating some law or regulation but obviously I wouldn't be all that concerned if it were a family member and it was an emergency situation.
Yeah, that's one I had thought about. I'm an RN, so obviously do know how to do an IV. Not in my scope of practice without an order though. But yes, for back country stuff and remote drives (which we do pretty often) I find myself wishing for that part of a kit.
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In a pinch you can inject coconut water into people instead of saline. Both the allies and Japanese did this in WWII in the pacific. I think that I remember the rejection rate being very low, below 2%.
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In a pinch you can inject coconut water into people instead of saline. Both the allies and Japanese did this in WWII in the pacific. I think that I remember the rejection rate being very low, below 2%.
Cool!!!!
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For those storing water in old cleaned juice containers, what kind of juice containers are you talking about?
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PS this post gives some good ideas: http://www.artofmanliness.com/2014/04/01/hydration-for-the-apocalypse-how-to-store-water-for-long-term-emergencies/
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The one thing I'm undecided on is heat and cooking. My number one concern is a power-out winter storm. I'm looking at propane or kerosene heaters that we could set up on our brick fireplace, they all have safety features, but fire is still a concern. We're having the fireplace cleaned/inspected, but I'm less enthusiastic about keeping sufficient wood on hand versus a tank (or several) of fuel for a heater. Also considering camp stoves, but again, fire. We could conceivably use our private courtyard (buying a grill might make sense) for cooking even in winter, but I'd be a little worried about the amount of cold air we let in coming and going. I'm still working on that one.
Considering keeping some extra gas for the car on hand, but it would need to be rotated through semi-regularly. I couldn't realistically keep more than a couple gallons on hand.
If you aren't keen on a wood burning fireplace to begin with consider having it converted to natural gas especially if your furnace already runs on it. Unlike furnaces that are now electricity dependent, my natural gas fireplace's light switch only completes a circuit so it still runs during a power outage which happened last March. The fireplace while defiantly not energy efficient kept my house in the 50s-60s while others were down to 40s and below.
I don't need to worry about cooking, again I have a gas stove so all I need is matches as a substitute for the electric start.
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The one thing I'm undecided on is heat and cooking. My number one concern is a power-out winter storm. I'm looking at propane or kerosene heaters that we could set up on our brick fireplace, they all have safety features, but fire is still a concern. We're having the fireplace cleaned/inspected, but I'm less enthusiastic about keeping sufficient wood on hand versus a tank (or several) of fuel for a heater. Also considering camp stoves, but again, fire. We could conceivably use our private courtyard (buying a grill might make sense) for cooking even in winter, but I'd be a little worried about the amount of cold air we let in coming and going. I'm still working on that one.
Considering keeping some extra gas for the car on hand, but it would need to be rotated through semi-regularly. I couldn't realistically keep more than a couple gallons on hand.
If you aren't keen on a wood burning fireplace to begin with consider having it converted to natural gas especially if your furnace already runs on it. Unlike furnaces that are now electricity dependent, my natural gas fireplace's light switch only completes a circuit so it still runs during a power outage which happened last March. The fireplace while defiantly not energy efficient kept my house in the 50s-60s while others were down to 40s and below.
I don't need to worry about cooking, again I have a gas stove so all I need is matches as a substitute for the electric start.
We had a multi day power outage a couple years ago . . . It was cold (-20) and icy outside but we were able to keep the house warm enough to avoid frozen pipes by burning safety candles. I did some BBQing outside (after digging the snow and ice off) to cook food.
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For those storing water in old cleaned juice containers, what kind of juice containers are you talking about?
Treetop apple juice containers. It's clear hard plastic. I'd have to go look at the number on the bottom to see what kind. I've had some for a couple of years and they seem to be doing fine.
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Motivated by this thread, I bought a couple of additional cases of bottled water, got plastic sheeting and duct tape for sheltering in place, went by the ATM to replenish our supply of cash on hand, and added superglue and water purification tablets in the first aid kit I carry in my purse.
Any idea how concerned I need to be about the expiration dates on the quick clot sponge and potassium iodide tablets in our 72 hour kit?
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Motivated by this thread, I bought a couple of additional cases of bottled water, got plastic sheeting and duct tape for sheltering in place, went by the ATM to replenish our supply of cash on hand, and added superglue and water purification tablets in the first aid kit I carry in my purse.
Any idea how concerned I need to be about the expiration dates on the quick clot sponge and potassium iodide tablets in our 72 hour kit?
Strictly speaking, I should advise any medication be properly disposed of at expiration date. But if we were to talk about this theoretically, ahem, I would assume potassium iodide would be quite stable, as it is a salt technically, and that exact structural stability is how it functions in the thyroid.
Quickclot is koalin, which is an inorganic mineral apparently. Given then that it's a structural function vs a biochemical trigger, I would guess it would be very shelf stable.
Full disclosure: it's been a lot of years since I've taken chemistry =)
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Hi All ,
I've ordered the modern survival manual by Fernando Aguirre so i'll maybe post some more once i've absorbed some of that .
With the UK and brexit i think it's worthwhile to be prepared for some civil disorder, disruption to food supplies maybe a financial crises.
Regards ,
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Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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... It's shocking that many people need to run to the store when their water is unexpectedly down for 12 hours.
Guilty...but I am a fast learner... ;)
We are well stocked now so won't need to do a run to the store.
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An emergency here is likely to mean an Earthquake without warning. Wood frame houses should likely do all right, but if not I expect to have to dig myself and my supplies out from under a pile of drywall and 2 x 4's. As a person who also does camping/backpacking I don't really do anything special to be prepared for emergencies.
Water: is the hardest thing to get. There's a sizeable creek a couple blocks away so I don't store any water. I do have a water filter as well as a Whisperlite Universal camp stove which should provide two ways to get water. https://www.rei.com/product/830342/msr-whisperlite-universal-backpacking-stove burns white gas, unleaded gas, canisters...and more so there should be plenty of fuel. I have a gallon of white gas and some canisters that I use for backpacking so the gallon isn't always a full gallon, but hey....it burns unleaded so there's always the gas in the lawnmower, the car, the gas can for the lawnmower....
The stove is stored on an outside wall so it shouldn't be too much effort to dig out.
Food: Sometimes I have some backpacking meals on hand....most times I don't. I usually have a bunch of dried pasta, canned pears, other things in the cupboards, etc. Pasta sauce is in glass jars so it seems there's a high likelihood of them falling out of the cupboard and breaking..Might be eating my pasta without sauce :( In any case plan a) would be to eat all the perishable refrigerated/frozen goods in the first day or 3 depending on how long things stay frozen before breaking into the cupboards. At any given time I estimate there is a couple weeks or a month of non-perishables in my cupboards in containers that are not likely to break. Not to mention the possibility of there being a good portion of a 50 lb bag of rice from Costco.
Shelter/staying dry/not freezing to death. I keep my old sleeping bag in the car. The car is in the driveway, not the garage...that sleeping bag should be accessible and dry. It's also great for if the car breaks down in the winter in the middle of nowhere. Also great if my other, preffered sleeping bag is buried somewhere inaccessible or it gets wet before I dig it out. I don't store it as smartly as the stove...
First aid, other essentials, etc. All my regular camping stuff. Any list of camping essentials is likely to be good enough for an emergency as well. Camping sites/lists of 10 essentials may be of great use here. Bonus: This stuff is usually portable because people are planning to carry everything they need to live around on their back. I keep all this stuff stored permanently in my backpack which is stored near my stove so I can dig it all out at the same time.
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I want to thank this thread for existing! I’ve finally started an emergency kit and I feel very responsible about it :)
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PTF. Planning to read the whole thread when I have time.
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PTF. Planning to read the whole thread when I have time.
Something about that phrasing for an emergency preparedness thread. Yeah... been meaning to get around to it... someday...
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PTF. Planning to read the whole thread when I have time.
Something about that phrasing for an emergency preparedness thread. Yeah... been meaning to get around to it... someday...
It helped me to start small: food, water, first aid kit. I’m now filling in the blanks.
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PTF. Planning to read the whole thread when I have time.
Something about that phrasing for an emergency preparedness thread. Yeah... been meaning to get around to it... someday...
It helped me to start small: food, water, first aid kit. I’m now filling in the blanks.
Like most things, I suspect that you’ll get ~80% of the benefit/preparedness doing the most easiest and most basic things. Most people don’t even do that much (and inevitably suffer somewhat when disaster strikes). Each successive ‘level’ takes a much bigger amount of resources and is less likely to be needed.
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PTF. Planning to read the whole thread when I have time.
Something about that phrasing for an emergency preparedness thread. Yeah... been meaning to get around to it... someday...
It helped me to start small: food, water, first aid kit. I’m now filling in the blanks.
Like most things, I suspect that you’ll get ~80% of the benefit/preparedness doing the most easiest and most basic things. Most people don’t even do that much (and inevitably suffer somewhat when disaster strikes). Each successive ‘level’ takes a much bigger amount of resources and is less likely to be needed.
Really, most people just don't know how to use what they have or don't know where to put it. No need to spend money when you already have what you need. If you have a spare set of gym shoes you should probably throw them in the trunk of your car. If you plan to hide in a closet for a tornado make sure you keep a blanket in there. Don't play the eat everything in your house challenges and you have a fresh food supply of things you eat right in your house at all times. Learn how to macgyver a temporary oven if you're a hot food house. Knowledge is really more important than stuff in a disaster.
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I just carry the FIRST AID kit in my vehicle for urgent needs.
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Really, most people just don't know how to use what they have or don't know where to put it. No need to spend money when you already have what you need. If you have a spare set of gym shoes you should probably throw them in the trunk of your car. If you plan to hide in a closet for a tornado make sure you keep a blanket in there. Don't play the eat everything in your house challenges and you have a fresh food supply of things you eat right in your house at all times. Learn how to macgyver a temporary oven if you're a hot food house. Knowledge is really more important than stuff in a disaster.
Reading the above - this is one of those comments where if read a certain way I can find myself nodding along, but if read another I vehemently disagree. I certainly concur that there's little need to go out and spend hundreds of dollars on specialty disaster gear, and that much of what you already own can be put to good use during a disaster. But to think that a pair of gym shoes in your car or a blanket in your closet are sufficient preparation for a real disaster is fool-hardy, and sounds like advice from someone who's never really been through an event which knocks out all services for several days.
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Really, most people just don't know how to use what they have or don't know where to put it. No need to spend money when you already have what you need. If you have a spare set of gym shoes you should probably throw them in the trunk of your car. If you plan to hide in a closet for a tornado make sure you keep a blanket in there. Don't play the eat everything in your house challenges and you have a fresh food supply of things you eat right in your house at all times. Learn how to macgyver a temporary oven if you're a hot food house. Knowledge is really more important than stuff in a disaster.
Reading the above - this is one of those comments where if read a certain way I can find myself nodding along, but if read another I vehemently disagree. I certainly concur that there's little need to go out and spend hundreds of dollars on specialty disaster gear, and that much of what you already own can be put to good use during a disaster. But to think that a pair of gym shoes in your car or a blanket in your closet are sufficient preparation for a real disaster is fool-hardy, and sounds like advice from someone who's never really been through an event which knocks out all services for several days.
Very true! I lived in tornado country growing up where there was little danger of services being out for days at a time. When we were hit only some places had trouble and others were perfectly fine - that's the nature of tornados. Now I live in earthquake territory and my emergency plans look very different. My examples were simply easy things that I found useful in both locations. I certainly wouldn't suggest that you stop there. Shoes in the car are for everyday emergencies not the end of your preparations for something bigger!
My point was that there are a couple of points you want to hit for preparedness and they might be things you already have. Food, water, sanitation, communication, etc. I bet most people have food in their houses, probably a lighter of some kind too. Anyone with a young child probably has some wet wipes on hand which can be useful as well as spare garbage bags. Lots of women keep whistles on their keys (although pepper spray is replacing this useful item) and I hope everyone has a first aid kit. All of these things can double in an emergency leaving you to purchase extras like a power inverter for your car.
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For anyone seriously interested, I would recommend checking out the preppers sub-reddit. There's a lot of good information on there, even if you just read a few pages in. Info on long term water storage, long term food storage. Emergency communications. Living in the Northeast of the US, I lose power at least a couple of days every winter, so I try to have enough food and water to last me that long.
If it's food/water that you're planning on storing in a vehicle/garage/closet; not looking at it again until it's time to use it - remember that temperature flux not your friend. Over time, heat will negatively impact the shelf life of most things you'd be looking to stock up on. Likewise don't let the water become ice and bust open your containers.
I recommend NOT storing water in empty/cleaned out milk jugs for more than a year before replacing. Something about the way the plastic is made, the gallon jugs end up busting at the seams after 1-2 years, even when stored correctly. Water is fairly high on the pH scale, so that may have something to do with it.
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My smoke detector has had an empty battery for a week. This thread is actually reminding me to put new batteries in it - I actually have them at home, I just put off replacing them. Something simple as this can save lives.
I also wanted to put new batteries in the flashlight I have on my key chain, but I'm out of that size of battery. I will put them on the grocery list to buy Saturday. The keyring flashlight was a freebie from some company years ago and it's a very powerful light. I also have one of them on my nightstand. I'm from a family of farmers, even though I live in the city now, and many companies in agri hand out these super useful good quality freebies.
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An emergency here is likely to mean an Earthquake without warning. Wood frame houses should likely do all right, but if not I expect to have to dig myself and my supplies out from under a pile of drywall and 2 x 4's. As a person who also does camping/backpacking I don't really do anything special to be prepared for emergencies.
...
I'm in a similar boat. We do have a dedicated bucket of freeze dried food that would last a few days separate from the pile of backpacking stuff. Our creek is a 10 minute walk away, so with any number of my accumulated filters we'd be OK there. Somehow I have accumulated about 7 tents, a heap of sleeping bags, a half dozen camp stoves, a few weeks worth of camp fuels, etc, etc. With the non-perishables we commonly have on hand I am guessing we could go for about 2 weeks as long as we didn't have to deal with neighbors or looters.
I've been meaning to stash some water to cover a few days, but otherwise see no reason to add to our stash of existing backpacking junk.
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The most likely emergency for any of us are job losses or extended illnesses / temporary disability / family emergency that disrupts our ability to work for some time. Most of us will experience all three at some point in our working lives. Money fixes them.
As far as natural disasters go, we are in wildfire, earthquake and mudslide country.
We keep water, food and medicine for seven people for one week, plus standard camping gear (friends would join us in a natural disaster, since I am a Disaster Service Worker and would be called out).
And, our best preparedness plan is to help, and be helped by, our neighbors. We develop social and trust ties with our immediate neighbors, with our neighborhood, and in our larger community so that we can rely on each other when we need help.
We are just coming off the combination of the worst wildfire in California history coupled with the deadliest flood/debris flow in nearly a century. It hit our community hard. Thoughts on this thread on retrospect:
1. Emergency Funds are king. These natural disasters disrupted normal commerce, commuting, and work schedules for thousands of people in a 2-county area. People were out of work because they couldn't get to work, or nobody was out shopping (disaster hit during the Christmas retail season), or because their workplace was knee-deep in mud. For people displaced by the fires/mudslides, either temporarily through evacuations or long-term through home/neighborhood loss, an emergency fund (or lack thereof) made a huge difference. People who had insurance still had to wait days and sometimes weeks to get living expenses covered. Have easily-accessible cash, people.
2. Natural disasters wreak havoc on your personal life and work schedule. As a Disaster Service Worker, I found myself utterly unable to predict my work schedule for nearly a month. The disaster consumes you and your life. Even those not affected directly felt substantial effects -- we were all distracted, had a hard time making decisions, and were filled with fear and worry and grief. The whole community suffers significant trauma. Having a financial cushion and your household secured means you're available to help others when they most desperately need it. Emergency preparedness is not just about you. It's about being able to help your neighbors, too.
3. Voluntary evacuation isn't just a suggestion. Many of the people who died in our area were in voluntary evacuation areas and could not get out quickly enough when the flash flooding hit in the middle of the night. We all learned that horrible lesson, and everyone I've spoken to has taken it to heart and now says that they will evacuate without delay.
4. We are responsible for our neighbors and community. We are responsible for ourselves, and we are responsible for each other. After this experience, I have to say that any emergency preparedness that doesn't take your larger community into account isn't complete. And it's not going to be convenient or even easy. It's awkward and tiring and hard and it's what you do as part of a civil society. You move over and make room in your home for people who need a place to stay, or at the table for people who need to eat, or at your job for people who need a place to work. Being prepared for emergency means being prepared to change what we are comfortable with in order to help everyone move forward with as little trauma as possible.
5. Use media carefully. It's invaluable when getting critical information (evacuation notices, routes, resources, etc.). But watching the disaster play out over and over and over and watching images of it just deepens the shock and stress. We turned off the TV as often as possible to help protect our psychological health. We need to be able to be emotionally and psychologically available to listen to and help each other, and we found that watching TV coverage of our disaster rapidly depleted our ability to do that. TV was emotionally expensive. My Mustachian mindset kicked it to the curb once I figured that out.
So yes, an emergency fund and a stash of bottled water and food, a first aid kit, and a plan are essential. But you will not experience the disaster, whatever it is, in a vacuum, and you need to be prepared to help your community, just as they need to be prepared to help you.
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@Urchina thank you so much for sharing your experiences and thoughts on that. Did you find your food/water/camping gear stores to be sufficient? Was there anything you wish you'd had that you didn't, or thought would be invaluable that turned out to be useless? Thanks.
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There is so much great info in this thread and here is my two cents.
Here are some things that will make a power outage easier.
Power invertor are great to have. You can run one off an idling car and run one appliance like a fridge or chest freezer. We also use the power invertor to charge cell phones and lap tops and other small rechargeable items. It is far less work than firing up the generator.
Storms are the biggest issue for me. We have well water and when the power is out we have no water. There are things I do before a storm is coming to make my life easier. While I am on a well now I did many of these things when I lived in an apartment in a area that gets hit with hurricanes. If the whole city loses power odds are you will lose water too.
When a storm is predicted I fill my 2 giant stock pots with water and cover them. This way I have water on hand and ready to go in the morning.
I also have a pair of 5 gallon solar showers. I fill them up and hang them in the shower and over the kitchen sink. This way I can easily wash my hands.
I also keep baby wipes and wet wipes on hand for when we have no water.
I refill gallon vinegar bottles with water and keep enough on hand for my husband and our chickens.
We have a small camp stove and plenty of fuel for it. If you have a camp stove, fuel, tea kettle/thin walled pot, and a french press you can have coffee during a power outage. This is an essential preparedness item in terms of keeping my DH happy.
I tend to keep containers with ice in them in my freezer chest. I move the to the fridge when the power is out.
We also have Mr. Heater indoor propane heaters for power outages in the winter. We got the adapters to use them with 20 pound propane tanks.
We keep paper goods on hand to reduce dishes piling up.
Also if a storm is predicted fill the gas tanks in your vehicles, catch up on laundry and dishes.
A small battery operated fan is great for keeping the DH when it is hot and there is no power.
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3. Voluntary evacuation isn't just a suggestion. Many of the people who died in our area were in voluntary evacuation areas and could not get out quickly enough when the flash flooding hit in the middle of the night. We all learned that horrible lesson, and everyone I've spoken to has taken it to heart and now says that they will evacuate without delay.
It's unfortunate that it can take a tragedy before people are willing to listen to emergency services.
In Australia, RFS, SES and other emergency services have come up against the blasé atittudes of locals who refused to heed emergency warnings because they had seen it all before.
"You should have seen the floods in 2010/bushfires in 2002/bushfires in 1998/floods in 1990, and we didn't evacuate then."
In 1990, Nyngan residents ignored warnings to evacuate, despite rising floodwater. Then the Bogan River breached its banks. Emergency services had to call in army and news choppers to evacuate the entire town.
I was three when this happened, but a couple of years ago I interviewed SCAT paramedics who worked dozens of natural disasters over the years, including Nyngan floods, and they said complacent, ignorant, proud or stubborn residents were the biggest threat they faced.
That dynamic has improved over the years, but there’s still room for improvement. A coronial inquiry was just announced into communication and co-operation between RFS and farmers during bushfires in the NSW Central West last year.
Have the car loaded and ready to go, and if someone tells you to get out, get out. By the same token, if warnings change to “too late to leave”, you can’t panic and decide you’d really rather be somewhere else.
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The most likely emergency for any of us are job losses or extended illnesses / temporary disability / family emergency that disrupts our ability to work for some time. Most of us will experience all three at some point in our working lives. Money fixes them.
As far as natural disasters go, we are in wildfire, earthquake and mudslide country.
We keep water, food and medicine for seven people for one week, plus standard camping gear (friends would join us in a natural disaster, since I am a Disaster Service Worker and would be called out).
And, our best preparedness plan is to help, and be helped by, our neighbors. We develop social and trust ties with our immediate neighbors, with our neighborhood, and in our larger community so that we can rely on each other when we need help.
We are just coming off the combination of the worst wildfire in California history coupled with the deadliest flood/debris flow in nearly a century. It hit our community hard. Thoughts on this thread on retrospect:
1. Emergency Funds are king. These natural disasters disrupted normal commerce, commuting, and work schedules for thousands of people in a 2-county area. People were out of work because they couldn't get to work, or nobody was out shopping (disaster hit during the Christmas retail season), or because their workplace was knee-deep in mud. For people displaced by the fires/mudslides, either temporarily through evacuations or long-term through home/neighborhood loss, an emergency fund (or lack thereof) made a huge difference. People who had insurance still had to wait days and sometimes weeks to get living expenses covered. Have easily-accessible cash, people.
2. Natural disasters wreak havoc on your personal life and work schedule. As a Disaster Service Worker, I found myself utterly unable to predict my work schedule for nearly a month. The disaster consumes you and your life. Even those not affected directly felt substantial effects -- we were all distracted, had a hard time making decisions, and were filled with fear and worry and grief. The whole community suffers significant trauma. Having a financial cushion and your household secured means you're available to help others when they most desperately need it. Emergency preparedness is not just about you. It's about being able to help your neighbors, too.
3. Voluntary evacuation isn't just a suggestion. Many of the people who died in our area were in voluntary evacuation areas and could not get out quickly enough when the flash flooding hit in the middle of the night. We all learned that horrible lesson, and everyone I've spoken to has taken it to heart and now says that they will evacuate without delay.
4. We are responsible for our neighbors and community. We are responsible for ourselves, and we are responsible for each other. After this experience, I have to say that any emergency preparedness that doesn't take your larger community into account isn't complete. And it's not going to be convenient or even easy. It's awkward and tiring and hard and it's what you do as part of a civil society. You move over and make room in your home for people who need a place to stay, or at the table for people who need to eat, or at your job for people who need a place to work. Being prepared for emergency means being prepared to change what we are comfortable with in order to help everyone move forward with as little trauma as possible.
5. Use media carefully. It's invaluable when getting critical information (evacuation notices, routes, resources, etc.). But watching the disaster play out over and over and over and watching images of it just deepens the shock and stress. We turned off the TV as often as possible to help protect our psychological health. We need to be able to be emotionally and psychologically available to listen to and help each other, and we found that watching TV coverage of our disaster rapidly depleted our ability to do that. TV was emotionally expensive. My Mustachian mindset kicked it to the curb once I figured that out.
So yes, an emergency fund and a stash of bottled water and food, a first aid kit, and a plan are essential. But you will not experience the disaster, whatever it is, in a vacuum, and you need to be prepared to help your community, just as they need to be prepared to help you.
Great post. While thankfully I and my direct community were not directly impacted by the Japanese quake and disaster, it did touch us and eventually I was evacuated. I'll echo a lot of these things. One reason my emergency kit has a book, despite that taking up precious space in the go-bag, is that I found it was very easy to obsessively take in any and all information about the event. It was on every news venure--even those outside this country--24/7, and I wanted to know every thing. Every. Thing. All the time. I couldn't turn it off because it really was an obsession. But it wasn't healthy.
And to add to point 1, have actual cash on hand. Even with an ATM card, while you will surely be able to get cash eventually, when everything is disrupted, machines may not be filled, and even when they are, they empty quickly. Having at least a couple hundred dollars in actual cash may make the first few days far less painful for you.
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Just found this thread, quite belatedly. The only natural disaster that I have to prep for where I live is summer bushfires. I don't think we're going to have any major fires this summer but the past week there have been a couple of biggish suburban grass fires, one of which had a WATCH AND LEAVE warning for it for a while which I haven't seen for a long time.
This summer my prep has been for evacuating from a small local fire. Our prep so far has been:
1) Always carry a spare battery pack for our phones, one each (small urban fires are unlikely to take out the mobile phone system but local blackouts can happen with fires or even a bad storm). If nothing else, phones can be readily used as backup torches if you have spare battery power.
2) DH carries spare insulin for me in his backpack in a Frio bag, and I always take my handbag with me everywhere which has my diabetes supplies, phone, Betadine, bandaids and 1 week's worth of my meds (insulin is the only must-have - I'd be uncomfortable without my other meds but going off them for a while won't kill me).
3) Kitty carrier gets left out in the lounge room all during summer in case kitty needs to be grabbed at short notice for an evacuation.
4) Talk to DH about where we would evacuate, what we'd need to take etc.
5) Make sure the wind up torch is next to the front door and easily findable.
6) Our place isn't set up to be fire safe (I'm in medium density housing with shared walls and none of us are) and I'm not particularly mobile or agile. So we'd evacuate, not stay and defend. But, there are functioning hoses permanently attached to the front yard and back yard taps, so anyone can use them to try to save our place/hose down rooves/themselves etc.
But... I haven't packed a bug out bag this summer because the fire risk was low for suburban areas. We haven't had a day above Very High Fire Danger this summer, but we still had two recent alarming urban fires happened on High Fire Danger and Very High Fire Danger days! which is nuts, fires on those days usually aren't that dangerous. I usually only pay close attention to fire danger warnings on Severe and Catastrophic days.)
To do in the next day or so:
- pack a bug out bag with 1 days worth of water for 2 people, packet of muesli bars, jelly beans, wind up torch, heavy duty gloves, long sleeve cotton t-shirts and jeans. Leave heavy boots out in the lounge room for ease of access (fire appropriate footwear).
- buy another Frio bag to keep spare insulin cool out of the fridge (been procrastinating this one for ages because I don't want to support the place I bought the first one from - it's a looong story)
A question for the Aussies:
What bug out bag/prep stuff do you leave in your car over summer? I'm really hesitant to leave anything much in our car as backup prep because the car gets SO hot in summer. We do park under cover whenever we can but at least a few times a week the car gets left out in full sun. We use a sun shield on the front windscreen but the car still gets ridiculously hot. So obviously meds would be destroyed, and I'm not sure how long things like lollies and muesli bars would last in the car (I'm even a bit dubious about first aid kits - I left a pair of Crocs in the boot of the car one summer and it really trashed the rubber just from the heat in the boot)
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Just found this thread, quite belatedly. The only natural disaster that I have to prep for where I live is summer bushfires. I don't think we're going to have any major fires this summer but the past week there have been a couple of biggish suburban grass fires, one of which had a WATCH AND LEAVE warning for it for a while which I haven't seen for a long time.
This summer my prep has been for evacuating from a small local fire. Our prep so far has been:
1) Always carry a spare battery pack for our phones, one each (small urban fires are unlikely to take out the mobile phone system but local blackouts can happen with fires or even a bad storm). If nothing else, phones can be readily used as backup torches if you have spare battery power.
2) DH carries spare insulin for me in his backpack in a Frio bag, and I always take my handbag with me everywhere which has my diabetes supplies, phone, Betadine, bandaids and 1 week's worth of my meds (insulin is the only must-have - I'd be uncomfortable without my other meds but going off them for a while won't kill me).
3) Kitty carrier gets left out in the lounge room all during summer in case kitty needs to be grabbed at short notice for an evacuation.
4) Talk to DH about where we would evacuate, what we'd need to take etc.
5) Make sure the wind up torch is next to the front door and easily findable.
6) Our place isn't set up to be fire safe (I'm in medium density housing with shared walls and none of us are) and I'm not particularly mobile or agile. So we'd evacuate, not stay and defend. But, there are functioning hoses permanently attached to the front yard and back yard taps, so anyone can use them to try to save our place/hose down rooves/themselves etc.
But... I haven't packed a bug out bag this summer because the fire risk was low for suburban areas. We haven't had a day above Very High Fire Danger this summer, but we still had two recent alarming urban fires happened on High Fire Danger and Very High Fire Danger days! which is nuts, fires on those days usually aren't that dangerous. I usually only pay close attention to fire danger warnings on Severe and Catastrophic days.)
To do in the next day or so:
- pack a bug out bag with 1 days worth of water for 2 people, packet of muesli bars, jelly beans, wind up torch, heavy duty gloves, long sleeve cotton t-shirts and jeans. Leave heavy boots out in the lounge room for ease of access (fire appropriate footwear).
- buy another Frio bag to keep spare insulin cool out of the fridge (been procrastinating this one for ages because I don't want to support the place I bought the first one from - it's a looong story)
A question for the Aussies:
What bug out bag/prep stuff do you leave in your car over summer? I'm really hesitant to leave anything much in our car as backup prep because the car gets SO hot in summer. We do park under cover whenever we can but at least a few times a week the car gets left out in full sun. We use a sun shield on the front windscreen but the car still gets ridiculously hot. So obviously meds would be destroyed, and I'm not sure how long things like lollies and muesli bars would last in the car (I'm even a bit dubious about first aid kits - I left a pair of Crocs in the boot of the car one summer and it really trashed the rubber just from the heat in the boot)
You could consider leaving everything in a small cooler in your trunk. That would help protect against temperature extremes while parked in sun.
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Just found this thread, quite belatedly. The only natural disaster that I have to prep for where I live is summer bushfires. I don't think we're going to have any major fires this summer but the past week there have been a couple of biggish suburban grass fires, one of which had a WATCH AND LEAVE warning for it for a while which I haven't seen for a long time.
This summer my prep has been for evacuating from a small local fire. Our prep so far has been:
1) Always carry a spare battery pack for our phones, one each (small urban fires are unlikely to take out the mobile phone system but local blackouts can happen with fires or even a bad storm). If nothing else, phones can be readily used as backup torches if you have spare battery power.
2) DH carries spare insulin for me in his backpack in a Frio bag, and I always take my handbag with me everywhere which has my diabetes supplies, phone, Betadine, bandaids and 1 week's worth of my meds (insulin is the only must-have - I'd be uncomfortable without my other meds but going off them for a while won't kill me).
3) Kitty carrier gets left out in the lounge room all during summer in case kitty needs to be grabbed at short notice for an evacuation.
4) Talk to DH about where we would evacuate, what we'd need to take etc.
5) Make sure the wind up torch is next to the front door and easily findable.
6) Our place isn't set up to be fire safe (I'm in medium density housing with shared walls and none of us are) and I'm not particularly mobile or agile. So we'd evacuate, not stay and defend. But, there are functioning hoses permanently attached to the front yard and back yard taps, so anyone can use them to try to save our place/hose down rooves/themselves etc.
But... I haven't packed a bug out bag this summer because the fire risk was low for suburban areas. We haven't had a day above Very High Fire Danger this summer, but we still had two recent alarming urban fires happened on High Fire Danger and Very High Fire Danger days! which is nuts, fires on those days usually aren't that dangerous. I usually only pay close attention to fire danger warnings on Severe and Catastrophic days.)
To do in the next day or so:
- pack a bug out bag with 1 days worth of water for 2 people, packet of muesli bars, jelly beans, wind up torch, heavy duty gloves, long sleeve cotton t-shirts and jeans. Leave heavy boots out in the lounge room for ease of access (fire appropriate footwear).
- buy another Frio bag to keep spare insulin cool out of the fridge (been procrastinating this one for ages because I don't want to support the place I bought the first one from - it's a looong story)
A question for the Aussies:
What bug out bag/prep stuff do you leave in your car over summer? I'm really hesitant to leave anything much in our car as backup prep because the car gets SO hot in summer. We do park under cover whenever we can but at least a few times a week the car gets left out in full sun. We use a sun shield on the front windscreen but the car still gets ridiculously hot. So obviously meds would be destroyed, and I'm not sure how long things like lollies and muesli bars would last in the car (I'm even a bit dubious about first aid kits - I left a pair of Crocs in the boot of the car one summer and it really trashed the rubber just from the heat in the boot)
You could consider leaving everything in a small cooler in your trunk. That would help protect against temperature extremes while parked in sun.
Hmm. We’d have to be very organized and make sure we replaced the ice blocks in it daily (and I’m not sure how they’d last on really hot days). I just looked it up and car temps can go up to 60C to 75C even on days of 30-33C (And obviously hotter on the really hot days).
I think I answered my own question and I won’t bother keeping anything temperature sensitive in the car as part of my emergency prep.
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@Urchina thank you so much for sharing your experiences and thoughts on that. Did you find your food/water/camping gear stores to be sufficient? Was there anything you wish you'd had that you didn't, or thought would be invaluable that turned out to be useless? Thanks.
@Bracken_Joy, we were fortunate in that our house was out of the debris flow areas, and while we lost power intermittently during the wildfires, we did not experience an interruption in water, gas or power during the debris flows. Having said that, the debris flow areas had no natural gas, a boil water notice (if they had water at all, as the flows destroyed multiple critical water distribution pipes), no electricity, limited cell phone service and unknown sewer functionality for a minimum of two weeks and in some cases closer to three. Thinking about this, we've decided to alter our emergency preparedness plans as follows:
1. Have a much larger emergency fund than previously planned. Being in a disaster zone is expensive. Money gives you options. We no longer feel that six month's worth of living expenses is sufficient, given that we could easily have blown through three month's worth in a week or so if we'd lost our home and had to stay in a hotel and then sign a new lease on a rental to live in (signing a lease on a new place requires first, last plus deposit and this is a very HCOL, so that could easily be upwards of $10k).
2. Have way more water than previously planned. We've got a little over a week's worth at the house. Two is going to be our new minimum. Storing it is a challenge. We have no local surface water and do not receive rain for months at a time, so cannot depend on those sources for water.
3. Evacuate immediately if we're in either a voluntary or mandatory zone. Both the fire and debris flows were really unpredictable. That seems likely to continue. "Wait and see" no longer sounds like a reasonable approach to evacuation.
4. Update and keep copies of our essential papers (identity, banking, insurance) in an out-of-town location. Our town is small enough that the fire could have wiped out huge swaths of town (like what happened in Santa Rosa); the debris flows nearly took out an entire community. If this had happened in our neighborhood, it would have destroyed our house AND our bank, where our safety-deposit box is.... so we need to get copies of critical papers out of here.
5. No power, no cell phone service = really hard to get information. An emergency radio with solar/hand-cranking capacity is crucial.
More later, I'm sure.
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We live in hurricane country which means I check and refresh my supplies by June 1st every year.
Hurricane Irma was the scariest thing I ever lived through - hunkering down in a small block built bungalow - in the dark, with the windows boarded up was traumatic.
The uncertainty of knowing whether we would be in the storm's path - well, it was the first superstorm to cover an entire state, so really there was no place to go and hide from the storm.
Didn't help that a storm surge was predicted as well, but nobody really knew if and to what extent it would affect where we live. Hell, the receding waters in the Tampa Bay were terrifying to watch.
Anyway - lessons learned:
1. Get the hell out of dodge - there is no way I'm staying put when there is another superstorm coming! That means serious emergency funds because you can't just drive over to a friends house or hope to ride out the storm in South Carolina or Georgia.
We had friends who ran out of gas halfway to Georgia and ended up weathering the storm in the parking lot of a Walmart.
Mr. R. had a colleague at work who thought he'd escaped only to get hammered and flooded in Jacksonville - completely on the other side of the state.
Our neighbors took their 94 year old mother and drove to South Carolina then couldn't get back, because the roads were impassable for a couple of days and their funds were about to run out and they couldn't get gas to get back home - not to mention their hotel room there got flooded.
So yeah - I'll hunker down for a hurricane, but if it is another superstorm the next flight is mine!
2. Water - normally, I rotate three cases of 24 bottles, but in the future if there is even a whisper of a storm I'll triple that amount immediately. Two days before the storm hit water was scarce and literally guarded by a store security guard who allowed one case per person.
Yes, I filled the bathtub and all the big pots and buckets with water and about six big bottles of empty orange juice jugs. It helped to stay busy instead of watching the weather channel and totally freaking out.
3. Didn't really have a good rainproof, moisture proof, lightweight protective cover or box for papers and jewelry. Realized Mr. R. had no idea where two of his important documents are, mine were ready to grab and organized - fixed that since.
4. I spent the last few hours before the storm hit on finishing up a video and pics of the interior of all closets, cabinets and close-ups of the jewelry etc. Should have had that on a chip and cloud already, at least I now have the inventory we need.
5. Did not doublecheck that the flashlight-radio combo still worked - radio worked in June, but didn't work when I needed it.
Then I discovered that the second big lantern Mr. R. meant to take to work and order a battery for was not working either. It is the kind that looks like one solid chunk of battery, well he never took care of it.
Thankfully, I had a short wave radio and batteries for it, but I was surprised at the poor reception and am wondering if I could have improved reception if I knew something about SW radios.
We had enough flashlights and battteries, but it would have been prudent to have some that are solar and/or hand-crank.
6. It takes a lot longer than you think to board up all the windows and I was glad my son came to help with the big windows. Those boards are bulky and heavy.
Best thing we did was leave the proper screws etc in the wall of the house around the windows and marked each board.
7. I had all the components for a bug out bag - but it was not assembled and that cost time and caused anxiety.
8. We didn't have a dedicated box of food and water to just grab and take with us either. Having food on a shelf is great if we stay, but we almost left and it would have taken more time to put together a box for the car.
9. We only have two small gas cans - we should have had at least one big gas can. We filled up way before they ran out of gas - one of the simplest and most important preps.
10. Needed boots to wear in flood water and into debris - for safety. Flip flops don't cut it and all my other shoes are heels or good leather shoes.
In general - I was glad to have a kitty carrier, extra food, emergency cat litter and box and garbage bag liners - stored all together in an easily accessible place so I can set it up in the house or throw it in the car. (he is an indoor/outdoor cat so we don't normally need it)
Poor kitty was spooked too, tentatively explored all the damage outside the day after.
Irma brought massive destruction, but we got lucky, this time. Only minor property damage, but weeks of clean up from debris and trees. Our neighbors were not so lucky. We have friends who are just now finishing up with the cleanup.
I may not care for our governor, but I was sure glad that he got seriously involved in procuring tankers of gasoline for all of Florida.
Old people in nursing homes are screwed - the power failed, the caretakers left - no food-no meds, many deaths due to the heat and no air conditioning.
Voluntary evacuation - just go - don't wait or it may be too late. I truly wish I'd bought a plane ticket, but couldn't convince Mr. R. to leave in time.
On my list to do or buy for this year:
1. Boots to wear in a flood or piles of debris. Wish I had those during Irma!
2. Inflatable tube and a pump for it.
3. One of those bathtub liners to fill with water, that can be closed and preserved - debating.
4. Have a to go bag already packed.
5. Research and buy a solar radio and a crank radio and lantern. Already picked up a 250 lumens hybrid solar flashlight (holds a charge for years) that can also charge mobile devices.
6. Check marine supply store for a watertight container that will work well for holding papers.
7. Considering a generator.
8. Have a box of food ready to go in the car. Started on that.
9. Adding masks and a box of gloves and potassium iodine tablets to my list.
10. Considering buying emergency ready meals - enough for two for one week.
11. I want two of those silver emergency blankets for the car.
All in all, I think our prep was OK we had enough food, water, first aid and tarps, duct tape, camping gear to deal with all sorts of potential emergencies. Let's hope we don't have to test it again this year.
The biggest problem in the aftermath of the storm was that you could not get ice and gas was still scarce. Food spoiled because there was no power and it took a couple of days before the stores were open and fully stocked again.
No AC is bad enough but no power and no hot water for over a week was no fun. Some of our friends were without power and water for ten days. We never lost power - I suspect we are on a grid that supplies something to do with emergency services.